Friday 4 March 2022
Effective nonsense
As an addition to the previous post, we all know what a vast amount of nonsense infests the internet. Generally easy to spot for those paying attention, but unfortunately some of it is emotionally effective nonsense, particularly the political version. We have known about the problem in its various guises for a very long time –
The possibility that poetry may be effective in an emotional way, though otherwise nonsense, has often been recognized. Thus A. E. Housman writes:
Even Shakespeare, who had so much to say, would sometimes pour out his loveliest poetry in saying nothing.
Take, О take those lips away
That so sweetly were forsworn,
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn.
But my kisses bring again, bring again,
Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain.
That is nonsense; but it is ravishing poetry.
As Joseph Conrad, in describing an example in Lord Jim, says, “...the power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the logic of their construction.”
B. F. Skinner - Verbal Behavior (1957)
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3 comments:
It might be useful to differentiate between language which is ineffective in expressing the truth as it is known to the author, but nevertheless tries to do so and fails because of the difficulty of the subject matter; and language which merely attempts to obscure an inconvenient truth. It's hard to differentiate them in practice, but in principle it's worth making the effort with the first sort, whereas the second should be summarily dismissed. Poetry and all story-telling is in the first category; doggerel and most political and administrative discourse is in the latter.
Perhaps related are the contrasting views on how language works. On one side natural language as an imperfect form; if only it were like mathematics, if only grammar was logic… On the other language as essentially intuitive and emotive; alarm calls and soothing noises, the meaning is in the response it creates.
[1] “The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, to see who is right” (Leibniz The Art of Discovery (1685)
Sam - my old physics teacher used to say that if a book or piece of writing is difficult to understand, it suggests the writer doesn't understand it either. Not entirely so, but genuine experts do seem able to describe their field in comparatively simple language and somehow we recognise that.
djc - I don't think we'll ever get away from the meaning of language being found in the response it creates. Maybe it is partly a problem of hierarchy in that those further up the hierarchy have to talk down to those lower down and create certain types of responses. More clarity could make that more difficult.
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