After reading Roget’s subjective classifications in (oh so) objective terminology, I immediately thought of Jess’s boundaries project. As a brief summary, I remember her book pulling specific key words from the provided copy (First Things First Manifesto and 22 Immutable Laws of Branding) and listing meaning associations that linearly distort the interpretation. She compiled the list with a thesaurus (or so it seemed). Similar to the words Ewen chose from the thesaurus, Pointing out the subjective associations of specific words in the boundaries project may reveal subtleties that led to our group’s hostility exhibited toward both pieces.
Ewen presents specific examples of Roget’s “own particular version of truth” that demeans the very audience he is attempting (however genuinely) to improve. It could be argued that Roget’s vernacular is also a colloquialism, just that of the upper class. We, users of the thesaurus, are perpetuating versions of truth that carry more baggage than we may be prepared to accept.
The “street folk” flooded into the city and became the dominant population over a short period of time and were seen as a threat to the longstanding occupants. To balance the perceived threat among the classes, Mayhew targeted the upper class with documentation of the urban environment in the “blue books.” By recording the spoken word in literature, Mayhew attempted to construct a legitimate language to evoke empathy in the upper class. Roget targeted the lower class with documentation of the metropolis environment in the “penny books.” Educating the street folk on the history and structures of everyday London life was Roget’s way of legitimizing the immigrants as potential citizens. Both struggled to prove and provide means of legitimizing to the other, but neither spoke the appropriate language.
A similar shift is occurring with globalization. There are many new “immigrants” entering the territories of global exchange. Some are attempting to restrict and homoginize with rigid contexts and rules of engagement. Some romanticize the promise of diversity by documenting and displaying the other. As Mayhew and Roget attempted to establish a linguistic awareness in a time of expanding participation, designers are now faced with the challenge of establishing visual language(s) that also provide legitimacy. Learning from the miscommunication of the 1800s (and on), constructing legitimacy requires a multitude of structures in order to diffuse direct opposition. Understanding the motivations to control/project forms of language in culture(s) could assist in the contextualization of visual languages. (And here’s the big wopper (colloquial of fast food or cultural vocabulary?) question) How can a designer cater to the needs of legitimacy in the spectrum of the global local?
One of my favorite delights is slinking down in a movie theater seat and being seduced into a dream-like state as I watch and “enter” a filmic world of whatever adventure lies on screen. But, in order for this space out / image play / absorption / drugged / coma to really envelope me in totality – I have to believe the characters, their looks, their body language and their speech.
In undergrad I invested a lot of time in a project on slang – of which I learned that it is the nature of slang to exploit taboo phrases or to cleverly enhance them. I tried to represent the morphing of language terms in a visual mural of sorts, but realize now that my linear and sequential sense of order held me back.
The visual thesaurus online is to me the Amazon of word association. The visual model immediately roots meaning among the words with a fundamental core and nested structure that I find intuitive and accurate however abstract. It suggests in a loose sense that some words “birth” families of new words and translates their evolution so fluidly and rapidly that within seconds you can find yourself investigating “dwelling” only to come to inhabit elaborate castles in the medieval mind’s eye of Normandy. It’s word candy, and it’s sugary sweet.
I enjoyed how Ewen highlights the fact that the Roget thesaurus model of categorizing words is incredibly old. For people living in 2005, to recognize that this system of word subjugation was penned in 1852 and is a direct antecedent to the Roget Thesaurus on my bookshelf today (as opposed to an internet version) is amazing.
In terms of the global/local, I think language is a forever germinating organism. Just as I fought to defend Native American “nations” and those of the Palau and other more oral and undocumented languages as being a primary defining characteristic of “nation”, I contend that slang too, is right up among these geographic, cultural containers.
If you type in a quick Internet search regarding slang, you will witness hundreds of individuals eargerly gathering / documenting / compiling / organizing / editing through various tomes of slang from all regions of the world. I think that the Internet “form” serves these word hunters well as it is temporal, hyperlinked to one another, and wiki-collective. I have no doubt that this nebulous form of “publishing” language will continue to push current paradigms of visual form. Maybe I’m getting carried away, but I can imagine an interactive thesaurus-like global poll of word usage online with betting on col”local”quail darkhorses…
Reading Stuart Ewen’s readings has made me aware of the problems that arises when we try to fit things and ideas into what seem to us as perfect categories. It is clear that Roget honestly thought that organizing words based on ideas could only have beneficial usage in the world. “I have accordingly adopted such principles of arrangement as appeared to me to be the simplest and most natural…”(Roget 4) This phrase is where Roget went wrong. He organized the word in an order that seemed right to him. Roget’s organization is based on his own interpretation of the world, which unfortunately was incorrect in many of his groupings. Roget also states, “False logic, disguised under specious phraseology, too often gains the assent of the unthinking multitude, disseminating far and wide the seeds of prejudice and error.” I find it funny that Roget writes this in this paper because in his attempt to do away with prejudice and error he in fact reinforced them in the form of a mass-produced book, which disseminated these concepts to the multitude at a faster rate.
Reading Mayhew’s story reminds me of our discussion in last weeks seminar where Jason questioned the writer of the reading on professionalism because she seemed to be criticizing the structure to which she belonged and trying to identity with a local to which she was not a member. In her attempted to do so it seems a bit dishonesty. I feel the same way about Mayhew and the tone of his writings on the poor within his society. Mayhew writings seem even more dishonesty because his wording creates such stereotypes. The concept for his writings was valid, but his use of language undermined his attempt. My question is: how often our these same type of offenses happening today in the visual language we create as designers in our ever-globalizing world? As globalization continues to evolve I am going to find myself more and more often in the position of trying to communicate to locals to which I am not a member. Understanding how easy it is to slip into the pitfall of stereotyping within written and visual language should help me make a conscience effort to avoid such communication errors.
Both Mayhew and Roget’s attempts at trying to make the world a better place are noteworthy. As I begin to write a thesis on a problem that I feel will improve the world around me I now understand that I need to be extremely attentive to the visual language I use and how it could be reinforcing false ideas of reality.
One aspect from the section we read that really struck me was the extent to which social and cultural ideology/views are influenced by the science and technology of the time. If laws of science purport a social stratification, who can argue? This also brings into question our reliance on science and technology, which is ever shifting and changing.
The findings of physics, biology and medical studies are reversed with each new study, yet a large part of or society buys into the findings by creating a need for new pills, foods, devices, medicines etc. It’s really a profiteering system over a field that is neither accurate nor precise, yet we put so much faith into these systems of imprecision.
This bears an interesting relationship to PR, where at times, it seems like the newest pharmaceutical device, scientific technology, or social science structure is only a matter of perception that has found a way to resonate with our culture. These ideas are not true in themselves but are only true through how we (as a society) perceive them. Our society can only perceive their falsehood when public discourse surround the topic has shifted. A large percent of the elderly people I know take aspirin on a regular basis to help with the circulatory system, yet recently a link has been found between aspirin and breast cancer at a relationship of a 500% increased risk.
This puts at us an impassible paradox, with the information that we know, we can only attempt to make the best guess at that time with the information at hand. So aren’t we doomed to forever be the Roget’s of the future as the even further future looks back at us?
Right now, I believe there is very little difference among the people of the world, and that most differences are cultural differences. I think that the capabilities of a human are not bound by gender/race/culture. In the future, it might be found that this is a naive viewpoint, or that even thinking along these terms reveals a bias that our society has not yet come to understand.
This also reminds me of what Will said last week pertaining to how we perceive and create our identities. Our perception of identity determines how we behave and what we are willing to do through the groups and ideas we have aligned our identity with.
i think renee raises an excellent point when we consider the difficulty we're having in planning our symposium -- it is difficult to make any "content" fit into boxes.
in our case the four boxes were arrived at somewhat responsibly, in design terms. we undertook some visual investigation of the problem, then drew our conclusions. "design research" is a very new idea, and it seems that we should look to the pitfalls of other social disciplines' growing pains. in this light, mayhew and roget's contemporary versions of sociology, linguistics, and population biology illuminate the follies of the kind of pseudo-empirical determinism that graphic design wants badly to embrace.
i also think it is a mistake to draw the simple conclusion that mayhew and roget were "bad," anymore than globalization is "bad." their theories, like globalization, are a product of their time. while their writing is in many ways reprehensible, it also represents attempts to think in new ways about new things. this discussion is the beneficiary of prof. ewen's writing, which provides a critical context for these thoughts. i think it is important that if design is to become a critical discipline, we engage topics traditionally not the purview of designers (like globalization) with an analytic eye, and an attempt to understand context.
one other side note, i mentioned this in class, but i was curious who saarje baartman was, so i looked her up in the wikipedia. a sad story with possibly a very recently happy ending.
I appreciate jay's comments regarding mayhew & roget not being "bad" anymore than globalization is "bad"—it's too much of a generalization for such a statement to reveal much substance. More importantly (and more accurately), Mayhew & Roget are products of their time and just a little misguided… I would venture to say that not much has changed in that respect, because we're still confronting the topics of physical stereotyping and language biases. On the latter, "the pen is mightier than the sword" because language is not neutral!
I like Ewen's writing style, and how he presents Roget's seemingly objective style of categorization, but then weaves in the belief systems of Roget's influences (Baron Cuvier, comparative anatomist; Dr. William Lawrence, believer in European supremecy; J. F. Blumenbach, father of racial science), providing an historical context, and then circling back to the development of the thesaurus because by doing so, I begin to question the neutrality of the synonyms and categorizations even before Ewen deconstructs them. Take, for example, Category 875, where "Commonality" is clearly presented as undesirable, associated with "'the vulgar herd'…'the scum,' 'the dregs of society,' 'nobody'… 'cockney' and 'uncivilized.'" (Ewen)
Funny too, though, is that while the upper-crust assumed (assumes) such a role of superiority in regard to the protection of language, it is the vernacular that has not only survived, but has driven the development of language. The Costermongers, as I understand them, laid the groundwork for Cockney slang. I was also reminded of A Clockwork Orange, whose Nadsat slang was Cockney based, but also constructed from transliterated Russian. Beyond that, I don't remember much… it's been years since I last saw it.
I found that these readings (and lecture tonight) brought up certain questions that intrigue me and that I'd like to pose for now (in leu of posting a statement):
I wonder what parallels (or contrasts) can be drawn between the subjectivity of meaning inherent in Roget's Thesaurus (a singular and stereotyping viewpoint) as opposed to the collaborative, self-governing, gift economy model of the online Wikipedia. Both are subjective but in completely different ways.
And, I wonder how the thesaurus's idea-based classification system relates to the current online trend towards subjective, community determined tagging & social bookmarking (seen in applications like del.icio.us and flikr). The thesaurus resides in the middle between the completely arbitrary (alphabetical) organization of the dictionary and what ideas (or urls) an online tagging community deems most significant.
To return to one of Stuart's questions in class, (compare the intentions of Mayhew and Roget... ), their intentions are of course similar, but they differ in this sense: Roget's thesaurus intended to keep the Queen's English pure, and thus ensure the culture's strength and resistance to outside influences. Mahew's writings, on the other hand, had the intention of penetrating the 'other' culture, in order to reduce its strength. A striking example of this is when he exposes the very words that intend protect the London poor from the police. He even pokes fun at the informant who tells an outsider that they'd be screwed if the secret to their language got out. Without their special language and their mystery, they are no threat to the middle and upper classes.
A current analogous situation to Roget's time might be Iceland's policy on neologisms: there is a panel of scholars within the government who approve new words (needed when new technologies arise). No one else may introduce a new word into the language, all new words are created from parts of Old Icelandic words, and adaptations of dominant language words are never allowed. This is an attempt, similar to Roget's, to preserve the purity of the language and the strength of the culture, considering it's vulnerable position as a small island with no army and few resources. (Aside: Iceland's government refused to allow the import of Microsoft Windows until they created an Icelandic version, which I guess wasn't fruitful for them given the small number of copies they would sell in Iceland.)
Although the thesauri and dictionaries of today are still compiled by a group of people with a set of interests, The main intention has changed since Roget's first thesaurus. Money drives almost everything in this country, and I imagine conference meetings at these companies to revolve around the idea of 'how can we sell more copies?'. Obviously, it is by making these books accessible and useful to more people, and by making them politically correct not just because it is a trend of the times, but because being sensitive and inclusive is good business.
first of all, great points raised by everyone. i'm jealous i didn't think of them myself.
i wonder about the parallels between mayhew/roget's relationship to their audience(s) and the traditional role of the designer/client/end user relationship. they were both coming at their work as a kind of "top expert" in their respective fields (which is hardly disputable) much like paul rand or david carson would approach their projects -- the lone genius (or whatever it's called). we have to acknowledge the high degree of knowledge, skill, intuition, craft, etc, but i believe that is often accompanied by a certain -- often large amount of -- conceit.
that's where ewen's notion of inequality comes in of course. when one individual assumes a large degree of control over the endeavor, that singular viewpoint and all its biases are going to come through unfiltered and untempered. consider renee's point about the possible reinforcement of stereotypes brought on by the publishing of these writings. i also see parallels in the control issue in iceland that cheryl brought up. there are forces trying to maintain a heritage (imagined or not) in the amorphous and slippery presence of common language(s). it seems like a losing battle to me.
to get back to the designer/client relationship, i think that quite different things emerge when a project is undertaken as an "individual expert" who bestows their knowledge on the masses, and one who sets up a (possibly emergent) system with direct input from representatives of the constituency -- one that they can build in a more organic way by themselves. it is viewed as more authentic because the users have more ownership over it.
9 Comments:
After reading Roget’s subjective classifications in (oh so) objective terminology, I immediately thought of Jess’s boundaries project. As a brief summary, I remember her book pulling specific key words from the provided copy (First Things First Manifesto and 22 Immutable Laws of Branding) and listing meaning associations that linearly distort the interpretation. She compiled the list with a thesaurus (or so it seemed). Similar to the words Ewen chose from the thesaurus, Pointing out the subjective associations of specific words in the boundaries project may reveal subtleties that led to our group’s hostility exhibited toward both pieces.
Ewen presents specific examples of Roget’s “own particular version of truth” that demeans the very audience he is attempting (however genuinely) to improve. It could be argued that Roget’s vernacular is also a colloquialism, just that of the upper class. We, users of the thesaurus, are perpetuating versions of truth that carry more baggage than we may be prepared to accept.
The “street folk” flooded into the city and became the dominant population over a short period of time and were seen as a threat to the longstanding occupants. To balance the perceived threat among the classes, Mayhew targeted the upper class with documentation of the urban environment in the “blue books.” By recording the spoken word in literature, Mayhew attempted to construct a legitimate language to evoke empathy in the upper class. Roget targeted the lower class with documentation of the metropolis environment in the “penny books.” Educating the street folk on the history and structures of everyday London life was Roget’s way of legitimizing the immigrants as potential citizens. Both struggled to prove and provide means of legitimizing to the other, but neither spoke the appropriate language.
A similar shift is occurring with globalization. There are many new “immigrants” entering the territories of global exchange. Some are attempting to restrict and homoginize with rigid contexts and rules of engagement. Some romanticize the promise of diversity by documenting and displaying the other. As Mayhew and Roget attempted to establish a linguistic awareness in a time of expanding participation, designers are now faced with the challenge of establishing visual language(s) that also provide legitimacy. Learning from the miscommunication of the 1800s (and on), constructing legitimacy requires a multitude of structures in order to diffuse direct opposition. Understanding the motivations to control/project forms of language in culture(s) could assist in the contextualization of visual languages. (And here’s the big wopper (colloquial of fast food or cultural vocabulary?) question) How can a designer cater to the needs of legitimacy in the spectrum of the global local?
(This is Jessica Gladstone)
One of my favorite delights is slinking down in a movie theater seat and being seduced into a dream-like state as I watch and “enter” a filmic world of whatever adventure lies on screen. But, in order for this space out / image play / absorption / drugged / coma to really envelope me in totality – I have to believe the characters, their looks, their body language and their speech.
In undergrad I invested a lot of time in a project on slang – of which I learned that it is the nature of slang to exploit taboo phrases or to cleverly enhance them. I tried to represent the morphing of language terms in a visual mural of sorts, but realize now that my linear and sequential sense of order held me back.
The visual thesaurus online is to me the Amazon of word association. The visual model immediately roots meaning among the words with a fundamental core and nested structure that I find intuitive and accurate however abstract. It suggests in a loose sense that some words “birth” families of new words and translates their evolution so fluidly and rapidly that within seconds you can find yourself investigating “dwelling” only to come to inhabit elaborate castles in the medieval mind’s eye of Normandy. It’s word candy, and it’s sugary sweet.
I enjoyed how Ewen highlights the fact that the Roget thesaurus model of categorizing words is incredibly old. For people living in 2005, to recognize that this system of word subjugation was penned in 1852 and is a direct antecedent to the Roget Thesaurus on my bookshelf today (as opposed to an internet version) is amazing.
In terms of the global/local, I think language is a forever germinating organism. Just as I fought to defend Native American “nations” and those of the Palau and other more oral and undocumented languages as being a primary defining characteristic of “nation”, I contend that slang too, is right up among these geographic, cultural containers.
If you type in a quick Internet search regarding slang, you will witness hundreds of individuals eargerly gathering / documenting / compiling / organizing / editing through various tomes of slang from all regions of the world. I think that the Internet “form” serves these word hunters well as it is temporal, hyperlinked to one another, and wiki-collective. I have no doubt that this nebulous form of “publishing” language will continue to push current paradigms of visual form. Maybe I’m getting carried away, but I can imagine an interactive thesaurus-like global poll of word usage online with betting on col”local”quail darkhorses…
Reading Stuart Ewen’s readings has made me aware of the problems that arises when we try to fit things and ideas into what seem to us as perfect categories. It is clear that Roget honestly thought that organizing words based on ideas could only have beneficial usage in the world.
“I have accordingly adopted such principles of arrangement as appeared to me to be the simplest and most natural…”(Roget 4) This phrase is where Roget went wrong. He organized the word in an order that seemed right to him. Roget’s organization is based on his own interpretation of the world, which unfortunately was incorrect in many of his groupings. Roget also states, “False logic, disguised under specious phraseology, too often gains the assent of the unthinking multitude, disseminating far and wide the seeds of prejudice and error.” I find it funny that Roget writes this in this paper because in his attempt to do away with prejudice and error he in fact reinforced them in the form of a mass-produced book, which disseminated these concepts to the multitude at a faster rate.
Reading Mayhew’s story reminds me of our discussion in last weeks seminar where Jason questioned the writer of the reading on professionalism because she seemed to be criticizing the structure to which she belonged and trying to identity with a local to which she was not a member. In her attempted to do so it seems a bit dishonesty. I feel the same way about Mayhew and the tone of his writings on the poor within his society. Mayhew writings seem even more dishonesty because his wording creates such stereotypes. The concept for his writings was valid, but his use of language undermined his attempt. My question is: how often our these same type of offenses happening today in the visual language we create as designers in our ever-globalizing world? As globalization continues to evolve I am going to find myself more and more often in the position of trying to communicate to locals to which I am not a member. Understanding how easy it is to slip into the pitfall of stereotyping within written and visual language should help me make a conscience effort to avoid such communication errors.
Both Mayhew and Roget’s attempts at trying to make the world a better place are noteworthy. As I begin to write a thesis on a problem that I feel will improve the world around me I now understand that I need to be extremely attentive to the visual language I use and how it could be reinforcing false ideas of reality.
One aspect from the section we read that really struck me was the extent to which social and cultural ideology/views are influenced by the science and technology of the time. If laws of science purport a social stratification, who can argue? This also brings into question our reliance on science and technology, which is ever shifting and changing.
The findings of physics, biology and medical studies are reversed with each new study, yet a large part of or society buys into the findings by creating a need for new pills, foods, devices, medicines etc. It’s really a profiteering system over a field that is neither accurate nor precise, yet we put so much faith into these systems of imprecision.
This bears an interesting relationship to PR, where at times, it seems like the newest pharmaceutical device, scientific technology, or social science structure is only a matter of perception that has found a way to resonate with our culture. These ideas are not true in themselves but are only true through how we (as a society) perceive them. Our society can only perceive their falsehood when public discourse surround the topic has shifted. A large percent of the elderly people I know take aspirin on a regular basis to help with the circulatory system, yet recently a link has been found between aspirin and breast cancer at a relationship of a 500% increased risk.
This puts at us an impassible paradox, with the information that we know, we can only attempt to make the best guess at that time with the information at hand. So aren’t we doomed to forever be the Roget’s of the future as the even further future looks back at us?
Right now, I believe there is very little difference among the people of the world, and that most differences are cultural differences. I think that the capabilities of a human are not bound by gender/race/culture. In the future, it might be found that this is a naive viewpoint, or that even thinking along these terms reveals a bias that our society has not yet come to understand.
This also reminds me of what Will said last week pertaining to how we perceive and create our identities. Our perception of identity determines how we behave and what we are willing to do through the groups and ideas we have aligned our identity with.
i think renee raises an excellent point when we consider the difficulty we're having in planning our symposium -- it is difficult to make any "content" fit into boxes.
in our case the four boxes were arrived at somewhat responsibly, in design terms. we undertook some visual investigation of the problem, then drew our conclusions. "design research" is a very new idea, and it seems that we should look to the pitfalls of other social disciplines' growing pains. in this light, mayhew and roget's contemporary versions of sociology, linguistics, and population biology illuminate the follies of the kind of pseudo-empirical determinism that graphic design wants badly to embrace.
i also think it is a mistake to draw the simple conclusion that mayhew and roget were "bad," anymore than globalization is "bad." their theories, like globalization, are a product of their time. while their writing is in many ways reprehensible, it also represents attempts to think in new ways about new things. this discussion is the beneficiary of prof. ewen's writing, which provides a critical context for these thoughts. i think it is important that if design is to become a critical discipline, we engage topics traditionally not the purview of designers (like globalization) with an analytic eye, and an attempt to understand context.
one other side note, i mentioned this in class, but i was curious who saarje baartman was, so i looked her up in the wikipedia. a sad story with possibly a very recently happy ending.
I appreciate jay's comments regarding mayhew & roget not being "bad" anymore than globalization is "bad"—it's too much of a generalization for such a statement to reveal much substance. More importantly (and more accurately), Mayhew & Roget are products of their time and just a little misguided… I would venture to say that not much has changed in that respect, because we're still confronting the topics of physical stereotyping and language biases. On the latter, "the pen is mightier than the sword" because language is not neutral!
I like Ewen's writing style, and how he presents Roget's seemingly objective style of categorization, but then weaves in the belief systems of Roget's influences (Baron Cuvier, comparative anatomist; Dr. William Lawrence, believer in European supremecy; J. F. Blumenbach, father of racial science), providing an historical context, and then circling back to the development of the thesaurus because by doing so, I begin to question the neutrality of the synonyms and categorizations even before Ewen deconstructs them. Take, for example, Category 875, where "Commonality" is clearly presented as undesirable, associated with "'the vulgar herd'…'the scum,' 'the dregs of society,' 'nobody'… 'cockney' and 'uncivilized.'" (Ewen)
Funny too, though, is that while the upper-crust assumed (assumes) such a role of superiority in regard to the protection of language, it is the vernacular that has not only survived, but has driven the development of language. The Costermongers, as I understand them, laid the groundwork for Cockney slang. I was also reminded of A Clockwork Orange, whose Nadsat slang was Cockney based, but also constructed from transliterated Russian. Beyond that, I don't remember much… it's been years since I last saw it.
I found that these readings (and lecture tonight) brought up certain questions that intrigue me and that I'd like to pose for now (in leu of posting a statement):
I wonder what parallels (or contrasts) can be drawn between the subjectivity of meaning inherent in Roget's Thesaurus (a singular and stereotyping viewpoint) as opposed to the collaborative, self-governing, gift economy model of the online Wikipedia. Both are subjective but in completely different ways.
And, I wonder how the thesaurus's idea-based classification system relates to the current online trend towards subjective, community determined tagging & social bookmarking (seen in applications like del.icio.us and flikr). The thesaurus resides in the middle between the completely arbitrary (alphabetical) organization of the dictionary and what ideas (or urls) an online tagging community deems most significant.
To return to one of Stuart's questions in class, (compare the intentions of Mayhew and Roget... ), their intentions are of course similar, but they differ in this sense: Roget's thesaurus intended to keep the Queen's English pure, and thus ensure the culture's strength and resistance to outside influences. Mahew's writings, on the other hand, had the intention of penetrating the 'other' culture, in order to reduce its strength. A striking example of this is when he exposes the very words that intend protect the London poor from the police. He even pokes fun at the informant who tells an outsider that they'd be screwed if the secret to their language got out. Without their special language and their mystery, they are no threat to the middle and upper classes.
A current analogous situation to Roget's time might be Iceland's policy on neologisms: there is a panel of scholars within the government who approve new words (needed when new technologies arise). No one else may introduce a new word into the language, all new words are created from parts of Old Icelandic words, and adaptations of dominant language words are never allowed. This is an attempt, similar to Roget's, to preserve the purity of the language and the strength of the culture, considering it's vulnerable position as a small island with no army and few resources. (Aside: Iceland's government refused to allow the import of Microsoft Windows until they created an Icelandic version, which I guess wasn't fruitful for them given the small number of copies they would sell in Iceland.)
Although the thesauri and dictionaries of today are still compiled by a group of people with a set of interests, The main intention has changed since Roget's first thesaurus. Money drives almost everything in this country, and I imagine conference meetings at these companies to revolve around the idea of 'how can we sell more copies?'. Obviously, it is by making these books accessible and useful to more people, and by making them politically correct not just because it is a trend of the times, but because being sensitive and inclusive is good business.
first of all, great points raised by everyone. i'm jealous i didn't think of them myself.
i wonder about the parallels between mayhew/roget's relationship to their audience(s) and the traditional role of the designer/client/end user relationship. they were both coming at their work as a kind of "top expert" in their respective fields (which is hardly disputable) much like paul rand or david carson would approach their projects -- the lone genius (or whatever it's called). we have to acknowledge the high degree of knowledge, skill, intuition, craft, etc, but i believe that is often accompanied by a certain -- often large amount of -- conceit.
that's where ewen's notion of inequality comes in of course. when one individual assumes a large degree of control over the endeavor, that singular viewpoint and all its biases are going to come through unfiltered and untempered. consider renee's point about the possible reinforcement of stereotypes brought on by the publishing of these writings. i also see parallels in the control issue in iceland that cheryl brought up. there are forces trying to maintain a heritage (imagined or not) in the amorphous and slippery presence of common language(s). it seems like a losing battle to me.
to get back to the designer/client relationship, i think that quite different things emerge when a project is undertaken as an "individual expert" who bestows their knowledge on the masses, and one who sets up a (possibly emergent) system with direct input from representatives of the constituency -- one that they can build in a more organic way by themselves. it is viewed as more authentic because the users have more ownership over it.
Post a Comment
<< Home