Christopher:
ps - i'm interested in the idea of Bible as trope...
which trope/s? How would that work?
erm, I did think I'd said anything terribly
contensious there? but I was thinking of Whitman use
of biblical blank verse and repitition to wind himself
up into voice-in-the-wilderness mode in Song of
myself.
Or the way the Mathew sermon on the mount lurks in
Measure for Measure. These don't seem to be just
quotation or parody or some such post modern thing but
an adoption of the tropes of the bible. I can't help
feeling that this isn't what you mean though?
pps - i'm not quite sure what you're about on
efficiency and ambiguity:
Again didn't think this contensious, but a little book
that did me much good when I needed it was a handbook
called Style by Joseph M Williams (I like How to write
books) in this for example he discusses such well worn
writing practices as "always use short sentences" or
"never write in the passive voice" the latter much
used in word processing packages' grammar checkers. By
example he illustrates how wrong header these
assumptions are. Not wrong because any advice about
how to write well is wrong, but because avoiding the
passive leads to very ugly writing, constant repition
of the subject in every sentence. Likewise short
sentences can lead to very fractured unclear meaning.
Here I mean unclear in a bad way not ambiguous or
ellusive or intriguing (surely no problem seeing the
difference here?, what does Spivak call it? "strategic
essentialism")
Hmmm again I have feeling that something else is at
stake in your question though?
Personally the comparison with racism though felt
icky, its always racist of facisitic or liberal when
things are as we would wish otherwise. However, I
think that an analogy from transaction analysis could
help here. When advising I can say for example this is
practice that i have used and it did work, however
contigent however partial. This would seem the 'adult'
thing to do if however I say this is as you should do
and no other way is imaginable then, speaking as a
'parent' to use the transaction analysis jargon then
we force our hearer/audience/charges into their
child'. Language it seems can work as a tool and be
missed used (think of american senators speaking, or
legal or official jargon or transaction at time) to
wish that these people spoke wrote differently is not
to wish that the world moulded in your image and be
racist.
Though the scheme of writing a list of grammars might
amount to something as full of potential as the 'the
univeral history of number' by George Ifrah.
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