Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: anti flame capsule

Author:Joshua Allen
Posted:9/23/2000; 11:13:26 PM
Topic:anti flame capsule
Msg #:21675 (In response to 21632)
Prev/Next:21674 / 21676

So, learning vocabulary is largely a contextual experience---the clues and histories of where we have been are key.

When you say that vocabulary is contextual, are you talking about the way you can use one set of words with one person, but may need another for another person? Another interesting thing that's happening is the way that the number of words that are commonly used (at least in America) is shrinking. Use of jargon in various fields and various colloquialisms is exploding, but the standard core is shrinking.

I still think the value of identity as a context-providing factor is dubious. Philisophically, you could say I am one hundred percent absurdist. Identities are roles that we happen to be playing at a certain point in time; "life is a stage" in the sense of Stanislavski. For example, suppose that you are talking to a man who is a rural farmer living in a house he built with his own hands. You would assume quite a bit, but suppose that the man had been a drug dealer and spent 5 years as a fugitive and 10 years in prison. You can hardly expect that he would share this information with you, so relying on your quick make of his identity would yield you very erroneous information. Of course, this is very extreme, but my point is the same as Dave made sometime earlier -- "whole people are hard to define". Most people are sufficiently complex that it's naive to think you could ever really know them.

Another problem with identity is that people are generally smart enough to know what sorts of context you are going to assume from their identity, so they will be smart enough to selectively present you with the bits of their identity that they feel will give you a context most favorable to them.

So I agree that identity can be useful in setting context, but we have to realize that the person's identity gets distorted on the way out from them to us, and further distorted when we internalize the information. Times when I have had to just assume that everyone I talk to is probably not who they say they are and that their histories are just fictions (think IRC, USENET), I have had some really intense discussions.

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