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

Re: anti flame capsule

Author:Randal Phelps
Posted:9/25/2000; 3:03:54 PM
Topic:anti flame capsule
Msg #:21692 (In response to 21675)
Prev/Next:21691 / 21693

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.

Josh, I can only answer these two parts this post...my original statement referred kinda clinically to how folks acquire language...(yikes the education background rears its malformed head)...which is by virtue of context and experience with language. Context in the sense that you discover the meanings of words typically by concluding based on the words surrounding it...I know a guy who pronounces savvy (sah vee) rather than sav vee---my guess is that he has read it and not been able to notice its use in speech or make the connection. Whoa boy....This same guy has a ton of words he misuses like that....

No big deal really but, the appearance to those who know those words is that something is amiss. So, (sorry for the delay) little kids acquire language by being surrounded by it. They may not know what a word means but, by using the context that it was used correctly by another speaker they come to get a "feel" for it.

What is a wan smile anyway?

In so far as the language variety shrinking and the old tale of 1000 words for snow in innuit--->I would take the stab that the language is shrinking in usage because people find value in vagueness. Yo, Dawg, know what I'm sayin'

in our culture so much depends on the way we say it...to be Bill Bennett-esque I'd blame it on the damn deconstructionists....it is the act of a show like Seinfeld (which I find amusing) that tears apart each act, each emotion to its most minute pieces that renders every possible meaning---finally meaningless.

The olympics at this point of our culture are drug tests and world records regardless of how many vapid biographies that NBC chooses to do...Have some fun...go see the imax Michael Jordan movie....it is a pure creation. A fiction. A non-insight into a man who does not want to be studied and yet offers himself up to be studied.

it reminds me of Dave's war about the format of messages in the DG. It wouldn't be fun to be Dave...but, he chooses it....I am afraid the only anti-flame capsule involved dying.

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