The Meaning of Liff
"In Life, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist.On the other hand, the world is littered with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places.Our job, as we see it, is to get these words down off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society."
-Douglas Adams & John Lloyd-
-Douglas Adams & John Lloyd-
I know this is old grub and I suspect most of you have read at least parts of the Meaning of Liff, but the topic of language and ideas came up in an intriguing conversation last night, and it instantly reminded me of the Meaning of Liff.
We talked about how certain terms are hijacked by a subset of people (or organisations) and taint the concepts related to the terms in such a way that people will instantly categorise them when they hear it. Take, for instance, the terms "energy" or "flow". Many people will instantly link these terms to new age concepts or "hippy-esque" ideologies, while in fact, the concepts behind these terms are universal and uncoloured by any ideology. So we discussed the importance of the evolution of language. How language needs to continuously be enriched. How concepts need to be defined by words that keep them approachable for anyone. How terminology needs to be altered so that the concepts themselves aren't instantly incorrectly categorized.
Language can be both rich and inadequate and I do believe we need to conciously and subconsciously work at its adaptations and growth.
The Meaning of Liff is a playful example of this. Do we have a word for that feeling of sitting down on a chair after someone else has just sat on it. You know... sitting down on that warmth left by a previous owner? Nope. Well, the Meaning of Liff conjures up a new word for it. And hundreds more. Fascinating and fun. You can buy the "dictionary" here.
We talked about how certain terms are hijacked by a subset of people (or organisations) and taint the concepts related to the terms in such a way that people will instantly categorise them when they hear it. Take, for instance, the terms "energy" or "flow". Many people will instantly link these terms to new age concepts or "hippy-esque" ideologies, while in fact, the concepts behind these terms are universal and uncoloured by any ideology. So we discussed the importance of the evolution of language. How language needs to continuously be enriched. How concepts need to be defined by words that keep them approachable for anyone. How terminology needs to be altered so that the concepts themselves aren't instantly incorrectly categorized.
Language can be both rich and inadequate and I do believe we need to conciously and subconsciously work at its adaptations and growth.
The Meaning of Liff is a playful example of this. Do we have a word for that feeling of sitting down on a chair after someone else has just sat on it. You know... sitting down on that warmth left by a previous owner? Nope. Well, the Meaning of Liff conjures up a new word for it. And hundreds more. Fascinating and fun. You can buy the "dictionary" here.Labels: geek, Language, Perception, Words
posted by Dr.Pew @ 11:41 am
2 comments
2 Comments:
I had the Deeper Meaning of Liff as a screensaver on my pc at work until recently. I say had because I took a couple of days off work and came back to find that my PC had been vandalised and my screensaver maliciously converted to a mish-mash of pictures taken from sharkattack.com and planecrashinfo.com. They tell me it's therapy.
Sarah, as a linguist and "culturalist" I think you're approach to language and ideology isn't the best one. Try to think it in other terms and read some stuff on the matter to open your angle of view and, most of all, try to run away from that temptation of totalization.
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