Good evening Tony,
The french expression is phonetically very close to the english, which gives us another opportunity to confuse ourselves!
Literally it means "it is the tone that makes the music". tone cna be interpreted in different ways, timbre, intonation, and we can add all those features of communication that your egyption mate was good at, and all of us use more or less, in every day life.
I think we need to get away from the circular argument academe is so fond of, and look at a story wirth a beginning, a middle and an end. the function of language, in its broadest interpretation, is to communicate what is in our mind, thoughts, fears, ambitions, simple directions, ideas and concepts. Without language we would stand there like a lot of store dummies.
We still do at times, when we express ourselves in 'language' that others do not understand. We then have to learn to become multi-lingual. this does not mean we have to learn a foreign language, like French, Spanish or Dutch (very easy to learn, several million dutch children speak it fluently) It is within the scope and diversity of your mother tongue, my acquired one.
as a subversive element in the disability movement here in Oz, I speak/communicate, with people with disabilities, their families, but also with the experts, therapists, psychologists and other professionals in the industry. With few exceptions, they do not speak the same language. The pros try to communicate in a rational, emotional-free zone. People with disabilities and there families I find largely communicate at an emotional level, as they have much to be emotional about. The misunderstandings, lack of connection, failure in establishing relationships, litter the landscape, largely due to the inability to communicate meaningfully.
Some time ago I wrote about partnerships, in the context of what is happening here in Qld. It fits in a broader context, and so I will put it at the end of this email. Enjoy. Have a great Easter. I will!
rgds John
Disability Services Queensland and Partnerships
Disability Services Queensland believes it essential that it develops and maintains positive and trusting relationships with people with disabilities and their families. One reason is that it needs to leave behind its luggage from the past. A past that was less than glorious. A more positive motive is that it believes that it needs to be open and welcoming to achieve the best possible results for people with disabilities and their families. It needs to learn to listen better and learn more: from those who live disability all day and every day, as a disabled person or the carers for one.
Companies, organisations or departments do not have relationships, but they do have reputations which reflect their organizational culture. People in organizations have relationships, and the 'organizational culture' can be an asset or an albatross around their necks. So it is DSQ's staff on behalf of DSQ that seeks to develops relationships with people with disabilities and their families with the expectation that it will benefit all partners.
Partnerships fit somewhere in the scheme of things between undemanding and riskfree 'good-morning-how-are-you' acquaintanceships, and very close personal friendships, dependant and dependable, emotional and fragile. It is the expected benefit, achievement, positive bottom line for all partners, that makes partnerships different from simple social relationships.
For people with disabilities and families it may be a better life, a better future, relief of worry and anxiety. For the professionals it may be job satisfaction, pride in a job well done, achieving good/better/best results. Some of these rewards are rational and can be measured, others abstract. All are very real.
The foundations that all good and successful partnerships are built on are equality, credibility and trust.
Equality:
In a partnership the partners must be equal, they must have an eyeball to eyeball relationship. Being equal does not mean being the same of course. The partners start from a different knowledge base, different experiences and a different level of equity. What it does mean however is that the parties are equally empowered.
· Empowerment for people with disabilities and their families means self determination and choice. ".. people with disabilities and their families (must be able) to identify their own needs, determine their preferred service and control the required resources, to the extent they desire, so that they can pursue their chosen lifestyle." (Charter Local Area Coordination)
· For DSQ's people empowerment means that they have the knowledge, the resources, and the authority to provide people with disabilities and their families with the choices: "so that they can pursue their chosen lifestyle."
Credibility and Trust:
Unless the partners trust each other, there can be no credibility because without these basic ingredients a confrontational rather than a cooperative relationship is inevitable. Confrontation creates heat through friction, which wastes huge quantities of energy, and produces small results out of big efforts.
Credibility and trust are the domain of people, not departments or companies. It is a union of spirit that is built slowly over time by people being involved with each other. It is about people liking and respecting each other.
For the partners to be able and willing to: develop and maintain positive and trusting relationships requires that they have common ground:
· The partners must share a common language. Without it no meaningful communication is possible. Every profession develops a language of its own, and the disability and health professions are no exception. The professional jargon serves as a 'shorthand', it expresses matters specific to the discipline, it attempts to rationalize the factual and abstract alike, and makes sharing ideas and knowledge with the rest of the world very difficult if not impossible. People with disabilities, and their families on the other hand communicate most of the time at an emotional, rather than rational level. Quite reasonably so as their problems, prospects, options and decisions generate intense feelings of angst, relief, dread, surprise, expectation, depression, hope and fear: it is their lives past present and future on display. The professionals need to become bi-lingual. They have to learn to listen and understand, they also have to learn to express themselves in what to them as individuals is a natural language, but professionally a foreign tongue.
· As well as sharing a common language, the partners must have common values. Not only must they use terminology and words they both understand, these terms and words must also represent and express ideas, and concepts that have the same meaning and values for both. The French say: "C'est le ton qui fait la musique" - it is the tone (timbre) that makes the music. It is essential for that the partners hear the same tone when listening.
Success or failure?
DSQ was born of promise and hope. The promise of a new beginning, and the hope that help is at hand for all Queenslanders with disabilities and their families who need help. May be not now, but soon. DSQ is new and fresh, full of ideas and is committed to embracing a culture of empowerment, openness and trust. It has much good will in the community. This enhances the prospects for DSQ's people to develop good, lasting and productive partnerships with people with disabilities and their families.
There is however a dark side:
1. DSQ has yet to prove that it is different from the Department of Families, Youth and Community Care. Although the rhetoric has been good it is action that will speak here.
2. To gain trust and credibility DSQ from the top down, at every level, will have to embrace its new culture, a new philosophical base, that establishes itself not only as an arm of government, but as the champion for people with disabilities and their families.
3. Even if DSQ can negotiate these rapids successfully, it may still fail because of a lack of resources. How can partnerships flourish if the most critical needs can not be met, the most reasonable requests have to be refused?
John Homan,
23/1/2000.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: Tony Fagan <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>; <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 7:53 PM
Subject: Re: Whorfian revival? Effect of language on thought
Dear John Homan
The French say what?? As a victim of the English education system that sees language as something that "others" have to learn in order to communicate with us ("fog in the Channel - Europe cut off"), I am linguistically challenged thus your point is lost on me.
I once shared a house with an Egyptian who worked for the UN. He was fluent in nine languages and could get by in four or five others. He was completely unable to say what language he thought in, and believed that thought transcended language, and that spoken language was a hopelessly inadequate form of communication; he used sign, gesture, faciual expression, mime and symbolism very effectively (and consciously) in everyday interaction.
>>> John Homan <[log in to unmask]> 03/27 1:04 am >>>
Dear Larry,
I am an engineer who also likes language as expression of mind and thought.
I am not prepared to limit my concept of language to what I write on paper,
or a transcript of what comes out of my mouth. The french say: "C'est le ton
qui fait la musique" Following through on that concept we would be remiss if
we did not include music, dance, the visual arts et al, as integral parts of
language.
have a good time, rgds John
----- Original Message -----
From: Larry Arnold <[log in to unmask]>
To: John Homan <[log in to unmask]>; <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, 27 March, 2002 10:29 AM
Subject: RE: Whorfian revival? Effect of language on thought
> I see and understand every kind of snow that has come into my realm of
> perception without the need for any word snow. Snow is encapsulated in my
> mind as a visual tactile memory which can be recalled for each instance.
> Unfortunalely I cannot communicate that to you verbally or in any other
way
> that I know of.
>
> I think that is what makes me a visual artist as I attempt through
> photography and videos to communicate non linguistically albeit
semiotically
> which calls up the subjectivity of your own interpretations of the
> connotations of the symbolism employed.
>
> You need to read a little more about the varios changing concepts of
> linguistics from saussure, past Chomsky and on to the cognitive linguists
> who attempt to describe the neural mechanisms which call language into
> being.
>
> Admittedly to think about language itself you need to think linguistically
> as you do with most discours, however most discours uses language as an
> extention from the concrete to metaphor. both the words I have just used,
> concrete and metaphor are in them selves metaphorical usage fo r words
> derive ultimately from sensory, temporal and spatial experience and are
> utilised first to describe physical phenomena I believe
>
> Language and its use is of great interest to me since I am technically
> speaking semantically and pragmatically impaired.
>
> Larry
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: The Disability-Research Discussion List
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of John Homan
> > Sent: 26 March 2002 21:24
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: Whorfian revival? Effect of language on thought
> >
> >
> > As a Dutchman who learnt to speak, write and think in English, I am of
the
> > opinion that the mind leads language, not the other wat as
> > suggested in this
> > article. If the eskimos have seven expressions for snow than their
minds,
> > thought processes see snow as a multifaceted concept and hence catered
for
> > that in their language.
> >
> > people's richness of language and vocabulary is the external
demonstration
> > of a wealth of thought, concepts and imagery.
> >
> > In my case, coming from a family environment in the Netherlands
> > where books
> > and ideas were valued, my command of Dutch when I left Holland at 22 was
> > pretty reasonable. In a year or so my English developed to the
equivalent
> > level, to develop further from there, not through the Readers
> > Digest's 'how
> > to improve your word power', but because of a progressive
> > development of my
> > mind, my thinking, exploring concepts and ideas. The language was
> > there all
> > the time, but my vocabulary and understanding of my language
> > developed on a
> > 'as needed' basis.
> >
> > The mind leads language!
> >
> > have a grat Easter, rgds John
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Wednesday, 27 March, 2002 3:14 AM
> > Subject: Whorfian revival? Effect of language on thought
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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