Quote:
Originally posted by Pretty Little Flower
Because I like you, I am trying desperately here to give you the benefit of the doubt and come up with some plausible way to explain how someone other than a person who has so immersed himself in fantasy books and movies as to be unable to distinguish the line between "real" and "fake" could actually ask that question.
Help me out here.
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I am glad to help. Much of it comes to philosphical stance and worldview. You must really look at the interrelationship between UNITS, also called "surface phenomena," and RULES, which are the ways that units can be put together. Think of the units as the different pieces in a set of legos: the different sizes, colors, and, in the cool sets, the curvy pieces. The rules in lego contruction are that the pegs fit into the holes. For the purpose of our structural analysis, we should look not at what is being made, be it a spaceship, racing car, or aeroplane; rather, we should look at how it is put together. It is the structure itself that is important. The pegs go into the holes. Remember this.
These underlying structures which organize units and rules into meaningful systems are generated by the mind itself, and not by sense perception. As we are talking about Trekkies with limited social interaction,
this is important! This means that the order that we perceive in the world is not inherent in the world, but is a product of our minds.
All minds in every culture at every point in history have used some sort of structuring principle to organize and understand cultural phenomena. For instance, every human culture has some sort of langauge, which has the basic structure of all language: words/phonemes are combined according to a grammar of rules to produce meaning.
Now, you may not personally find meaning in "K'plah!" But yet your mind, though not Klingon or, presumably, Trekkie, registers a psychological imprint of the sound, the impression it makes. This is its sound image. Think of the concept of, say, a dildo. A sound image for dildo may be different in different languages, and yet the concept is the same. And the sound image triggers the concept of a dildo automatically to the speaker of that language. Meanings can vary widely, but only those meanings which are agreed upon and sanctioned within a particular language will appear to name reality. And while all roosters crow pretty much the same way, that sound is transcribed in English as "cock-a-doodle-do" and in Spanish as "cocorico." This may have something to do with dildos.
Thought is a shapeless mass, which is only ordered by language. Indeed, can we have ideas without language? Sound is no more fixed than thought, though sounds can be distinguished from each other, and hence associated with ideas. Language is not a thing, a substance, but a form, a structure, a system.
Klingon, though nerdy, possessess a form, a structure, and a system. Who are you, Flower (notice how the sound image "Flower" triggers thoughts, in this context, not only flowers generally, but also of Flower, the poster?), to say that the Klingon language is somehow "fake", though it bears all essential elements of language?
Linguistist fuck.
For more, see
here.
