the language of postmodernism

What did you say? And what did you mean by it?

Moderators: AMod, iMod

User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
To the Postmodernist, classical accounts of truth–like that of Plato’s–which use language via propositional logic, or other bodies of knowledge which rely on the experiential, reason, or narrative cannot tell us anything about the world, due to their use of language. The strong Postmodernist must therefore reject science, history, and philosophy, as they attempt to rationalize the world using language.

This is synonymous with the Postmodern rejection of “totalizing” narratives, also abbreviated as meta-narratives.
The strong Postmodernist? Right, like they don't live in and interact with others in the real world just like all the rest of us. There are clearly experiences and reasons and narratives that do in fact entirely overlap with that which very few of us would suggest is not objective reality.

Plato and his ilk on the other hand tried to make this "philosophical distinction" between reality in the cave and a super-reality in a world of words that -- through God? -- transcended the at times grubby, grimy, problematic reality of the "human-all-too-human Condition" down here.

It's not that through language we attempt to rationalize the world around us so much as the extent to which one is able to demonstrate how his or her own words are or are not in sync with the world as it really is. Something that scientists generally do better than most others. And why, by and large, science generally steers clear of the is/ought world or the realm of God and religion and spirituality.

As for meta-narratives, science is stymied here more in regard to the "big questions" -- why something and not nothing? why this something and not something else? The age old debates about the very, very big and the very, very small...about determinism, about time. About the nature of such things as dark matter and dark energy
If language cannot tell us anything about reality, then how can we understand the world?

The answer is that social construction is the prime shaper of reality. This means that, in a Postmodern paradigm, it is impossible to separate reality from the experience of a subject rooted in social-cultural circumstances. Instead, reality is something which is interpreted and must be represented, so it cannot possibly be understood objectively. The world is therefore quite literally constructed out of how it is represented by a culture through language. Language and culture are seen to shape our notion of reality to such a degree that it is impossible to understand reality outside of them.
This of course gets closer to my own set of assumptions. Historical, cultural and personal realities that shift and change over time and across the globe. Endless squabbles over the way things are and the way they ought to be instead.

Then, from my own perspective, back always to how close we can come to demonstrating through language what we think and feel is "the best of all possible worlds". Or, for the moral and political objectivists, the only truly rational world that there is. Their own.

But that has always been the case. With the postmodernists the arguments have just shifted to the role of language itself.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Does anyone actually live their life as a post modernist? I doubt it. There has to be some level of decision before he gets out of bed even if he is incapable of verbalising the grounds for his decision. At the metanarrative level of decision making the preverbal is probably still present and psychoanalists could explain how that happens.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
This is why history is deemed an impossible pursuit in a Postmodern context. The argument is that the cultures and, therefore, the languages of the past and present are so different that they become alien to each other. The modern historian is detached from the framework with which people of the past understood the world–i.e.: their meanings and language. Because of this, it becomes impossible for a modern historian to truly understand the past.
On the other hand, to the extent that actual facts can be ascertained and then demonstrated to in fact be the fact of the matter -- historically or otherwise -- postmodernists become like all the rest of us. One can argue over the meaning and the rationale and the morality of slavery in America, but who is going to argue that the actual existence of slavery itself is just a matter of the language you use. Just a matter of one's "personal opinion".
Ideas such as truth, value, and justice are also seen as meanings which are constructed through language and projected onto reality. In a Postmodern context, this means that these ideas must be seen as derived from human beings–not the world nor nature.
Yes, given the manner in which I have come existentially to understand human identity in the is/ought world -- "I" as the embodiment of dasein -- I would then consider myself to be a postmodernist as well.

But what can this be conveyed to mean other than in and through a discussion of a situation involving human interaction in which some things are attempted to be encompassed as true objectively for all of us while other things seem clearly to be just matters of personal opinion.

Let's discuss Putin's invasion of Ukraine. As either a postmodernist or as someone who rejects postmodernism.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Belinda wrote: Sun Mar 13, 2022 12:48 pm Does anyone actually live their life as a post modernist? I doubt it. There has to be some level of decision before he gets out of bed even if he is incapable of verbalising the grounds for his decision. At the metanarrative level of decision making the preverbal is probably still present and psychoanalists could explain how that happens.
As always [for me] it depends on "the situation". An avowed postmodernist gets out of bed in the morning has breakfast, goes to school or work, interacts with others in the course of living his or her life in hundreds and hundreds of ways from day to day to day. I doubt that he or she will pull back from these experiences and interactions and question the extent to which the reality of them is predicated largely on the use of language to describe them.

No, instead, it is only when his or her life is grappled with in terms of one or another "grand theory and ideology" -- God or No God -- attempting to tie it all altogether teleologically into the most rational or virtuous way the world ought to be that postmodernism is often evoked.

I have my subjective rendition of that, others have theirs.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
What this all alludes to is the fact that subjectivity becomes important if language, ideas, and knowledge are not rooted in reality, but instead construct it.
Of course the beauty of language, ideas and knowledge encompassed in a "world of words" is this: that all that's being constructed is the "world of words" itself. And here the "subjects" do battle only with what the words are said to mean given one or another definition.

Postmodernists merely have their own rendition of it.

What still ultimately matters is your capacity to take this "world of words" reality constructed out of language, ideas and knowledge down out of the intellectual clouds and, in the battles between conflicting moral and political value judgments, demonstrate why your own conclusions are more applicable.

For example, with respect to the war in Ukraine.
Subjects and the culture which frames their thinking create particular discourses, which in turn contextualizes how people understand reality. Reality, when paired with the belief that people are always determined by their culture, becomes rather atomistic, since there are series of interpretations of what reality is, but no singular, true “objective” reality.
In our postmodern world, however, with the internet and a zillion news outlets and social media, there exists many, many, many more "discourses" available. As opposed to back in the day when none of that was around. Going all the way back to our premodern ancestors when, in regard to having a "discourse", everyone had a place and everyone was expected to be in their place. What makes the postmodern world different is that the sheer complexity of human interactions now unfold in what for many is a No God world. It's less a philosophy of life that guides us and more a way of viewing things given a particular "lifestyle".

And given this "brave new world" reality what on earth are we to make of intellectual contraptions like this:
Taking this position entails that cultures and subjects are insular from the world or that their representations are not shaped by things in the world which they are referring to. This seems rather unintuitive because when people use language they do seem to be referencing things in the world around them.
Given, say, a particular context?

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
This account of language also does not take into account that some concepts are much more stable than others, and that such concepts limit the possibility of mixed meanings and interpretation. For example, if you take the concept of “tree” to signify tall wooded objects, that meaning is relatively stable across the languages of different cultures and time periods. You could take the French word for tree “arbre” and the old English world for tree “Treo” and they would signify the same concept–a tall wooded object. Though, it should be acknowledged that interpretive differences can arise if the trees have different symbolic or metaphorical meanings across the different cultures.
Exactly my point! In the either/or world language communicates what everyone can agree that words mean. Words are invented to indicate things that are the same for all of us. Here the problem [for postmodernists and nihilists and all the rest of us] revolves around translation. If you don't speak French and you hear the word "arbre" the speaker has to point to an actual tree [or a picture of one] to communicate intelligibly.

Up to a point, it's the same thing in the is/ought world. If you are among English speaking people and say "my daughter had an abortion this morning", are postmodernists not going to understand what your daughter chose to do? Only if they never heard of an abortion. If postmodernism revolves around the rejection of the "grand narratives and ideologies of modernism" that's only really applicable to discussions relating to the morality of abortion, not abortion as a medical procedure.

And, from my frame of mind, moral relativism here has nothing to do with premodern, modern and postmodern human interactions. It's a manifestation of dasein.
Accordingly, another important concept of Postmodern thought comes from the Discourse theory of the Poststructuralists. Discourse theory states that the signs and symbols which language uses to represent the world fundamentally alters the psyche of people using language. This shapes their very ability to perceive the world around them. Postmodern discussions of politics tend to revolve around this idea of language.
Yes, of politics. But not when the discussions revolve around, say, Putin invading Ukraine. Here the facts are the facts are the facts for all of us. At least to the extent that the facts can be demonstrated. But when discussions of politics here revolve around right and wrong, good and bad behaviors...

What is "in fact" true then?

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Signs and symbols do influence what I do. If I had always been subjected only to people I respect who call dandelions weeds I'd never have learned to call them wild flowers and welcomed them in my garden. Similarly vermin / wild animals.

In my life I have been allowed by my teachers to explore freely without censorship and I've been taught that individualism is good. The most influential teacher was one whose knowledge and character impressed me the most. His way of influencing my ideas, my worldview, was to query what I had just said rather like, I suppose, Socrates asked questions. Examples are dinosaurs/ animals : going out fishing/ going out to kill things: the colourful poster portraying the corrida/liking animals. The meaning of the signs and symbols I used was changed for me because of, not only the Dasein he was but also because of the signs and symbols he chose to express what he purposed. However these examples are all to do with respect for animals and I already knew and had feelings for animals.

Putin invading Ukraine, or fascists bombing Guernica, pictures tell the story as linguistic signs and symbols can't do. Earlier, you mentioned Gestalt as it pertains to Dasein. Pictures are often Gestalts as language can't be. Although some poems are wholes unlike, say, instructions how to safely use a pressure cooker which are linear and where language denotes and does not connote.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
Power...becomes closely linked with language in Postmodern thought as a consequence of language’s ability to shape psyche. Thinkers like Foucault focus especially on power because they view language as a subtle, insidious form of power. It is seen as something which dominates people not through coercion or force of arms, but by shaping how they are even allowed to understand the world.
Power because whenever moral and political values come into conflict whoever has the power to enforce his or her own understanding of the really important words will often prevail. Just think of all the back and forth now going on regarding the language used by the powers that be to shape and mold public thinking about the war in Ukraine. In Russia it is reported that Putin's public approval rating is approaching George Bush's after 9/11. Whereas here in America he is the Devil himself. Their words or our words.
In the view of Foucault and many Postmodern thinkers, power is not necessarily held by the rich elite or politician, but instead those that shape the discourses and ideas which everyone–from the rich elite, to the politician, to the layman–use to understand the world.
Yes, it always depends on the context. After all, all of us are indoctrinated as children to describe the world around us as others describe it themselves. Starting with a particular family in a particular community in a particular nation at a particular time in history. Power -- might makes right, right makes might -- can become of fundamental importance in shaping and molding our understanding of the world around us. Think of the media industrial complex. It revolves around the corporations that own them in sync with the corporations that advertise in them. Think about that the next you read their own accounts of, well, almost everything. And postmodernists have barely put a dent in that dynamic.

Thus, even though...
Because of this, strong Postmodernists have a certain skepticism of bodies of knowledge like history, science, and religion or what they call “metanarratives,” since they are viewed as means of dominating our conceptions of the world.
...has the media industrial complex really been exposed by them? And then back to what specific "metanarrative" pertaining to what specific set of circumstances. What can in fact be differentiated as true for all of us as opposed to just sheer propaganda. And then back again to, well, I have my word for it.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 4:13 pm Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
Power...becomes closely linked with language in Postmodern thought as a consequence of language’s ability to shape psyche. Thinkers like Foucault focus especially on power because they view language as a subtle, insidious form of power. It is seen as something which dominates people not through coercion or force of arms, but by shaping how they are even allowed to understand the world.
Power because whenever moral and political values come into conflict whoever has the power to enforce his or her own understanding of the really important words will often prevail. Just think of all the back and forth now going on regarding the language used by the powers that be to shape and mold public thinking about the war in Ukraine. In Russia it is reported that Putin's public approval rating is approaching George Bush's after 9/11. Whereas here in America he is the Devil himself. Their words or our words.
In the view of Foucault and many Postmodern thinkers, power is not necessarily held by the rich elite or politician, but instead those that shape the discourses and ideas which everyone–from the rich elite, to the politician, to the layman–use to understand the world.
Yes, it always depends on the context. After all, all of us are indoctrinated as children to describe the world around us as others describe it themselves. Starting with a particular family in a particular community in a particular nation at a particular time in history. Power -- might makes right, right makes might -- can become of fundamental importance in shaping and molding our understanding of the world around us. Think of the media industrial complex. It revolves around the corporations that own them in sync with the corporations that advertise in them. Think about that the next you read their own accounts of, well, almost everything. And postmodernists have barely put a dent in that dynamic.

Thus, even though...
Because of this, strong Postmodernists have a certain skepticism of bodies of knowledge like history, science, and religion or what they call “metanarratives,” since they are viewed as means of dominating our conceptions of the world.
...has the media industrial complex really been exposed by them? And then back to what specific "metanarrative" pertaining to what specific set of circumstances. What can in fact be differentiated as true for all of us as opposed to just sheer propaganda. And then back again to, well, I have my word for it.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
But please see:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... nformation
Regarding
In Russia it is reported that Putin's public approval rating is approaching George Bush's after 9/11. Whereas here in America he is the Devil himself. Their words or our words.
Isaiah's words:
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
The people who are confident they are truthful will be psychologically stronger than people who know themselves to be liars.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
Foucault in his discussion of power talks about how language is selective. Here he takes inspiration from French poet Raymond Roussel who expresses the idea that language does not designate a word for every concept for which designation is possible. This implies that there is a poverty to language since it cannot express all that can be expressed. This is a recurring objection in philosophy preceding the Postmodernists; Ludwig Wittgenstein famously makes a similar critique of language amongst others.
All that can be expressed? Yet isn't language superb when it comes to describing actual physical objects and the relationships between them out in the world all around us? And with the increasing sophistication of science more and more "things" and their interactions can be described in extraordinary detail and sophistication. Last night the Science Channel took us on a voyage to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and Neptune. Through the mindboggling technological devices attached to the Voyager spacecrafts. Where's the "poverty of language" there? Nope, we don't reach that point until astrophysicists begin to explore things like dark matter and dark energy and "before the Big Bang". Where is the mathematical language needed to encompass existence itself?
Where the Postmodern critique differs (though much of it is inspired by Wittgenstein) is the implication brought about when this idea is tied to power. Foucault posits that because language only selects certain parts of reality, it only provides a partial glimpse of reality. Those selections, to Foucault in particular, are tools of domination and power: reality is shaped in accordance with what those who have power want to be believed. Language is therefore restrictive in how it shapes reality and the fact that it only allows certain discourses, in accordance with those in power.
Then all of this gets connected [for some] to the language those like Marx and Engles chose to describe the capitalist political economy creating the class struggle that eventually leads to socialism and then Communism. Only [so far] that has not actually become the language of choice for most these days. Why? Because the language used to encompass the "human condition" in Manifestos meets the far more complex and convoluted language derived from the far more problematic reality of the "real world" itself.

And then the language I choose to muddy the waters all the more.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Language is pretty well fail-safe when a competent speaker is describing the written rules of tennis, or how best to put one brick on top of another, or do long division, but when you introduce people's intentions and subconscious motivations, and people's daft attachments to this or that ideology then language, to be at all effective, has to be psychological jargon derived from folk language, folk language itself, or it has to be poetic language.
Iwannaplato
Posts: 6591
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:55 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Iwannaplato »

Well, I like that the postmodernists, for example, looked at the idea that science and technology are necessarily intertwined with progress. The last word there hiding value judgments, that is objective moral claims conflated, with yes, the creation of new machines and other kinds of technology of greater complexity. Complexity comflated with progress and thus the good.

If we talk about Postmodernism up in the clouds, taking the entire clump of philosophers and others who've gotten labelled postmodernists, and dismiss the whole clumb based on ultimate claims of the whole clump, it can seem like we are doing something,

but once you are down on a concrete example level, say Foucault finding similar practical and concrete facets of penal system in schools and hospitals, we are not denying all possible communication, but finding moral values embedded in language and habits, where others before Foucault just saw objective ways of dealing with 'education' say.

The nihilist can find much to appreciate.
The moral relativist can notice how one group is using their power and/or mystification to make their preferences seem the only ones or the rational ones.

Or we can stay up in the clouds and dismiss a complex set of phenomena in the very abstract way the opening post does here.

There's a call for specific contexts in the opening post, but the action, here, is actually just general and abstract itself.

Let's dismiss Postmodernism through clumping all it's ideas in a lump. Then assume a reductio ad absurdum - postmodernism means no communication is possible so all those guys contradict themselves so they are wrong, rather then doing the least bit of serious engagement with their specific work and concrete examples and the specific contexts

many of them included in their texts. One wonders if the op writer ever read any of their books. If so, then one could start with the very specific contexts many of them include. If not, then...well how boring.

I mean, these guys, some of them, get right down in specific contexts, specific interactions, even down to specific individuals dealing with specific institutions in specific municipalities, for example.

But let's pretend that never happened and dismiss the entire corpus and somehow act like reading articles that summarize postmodernism is actually engaging with thinkers who get labelled postmodernists.

Though, I have to admit, this might be a good strategy for a goal that escapes me.
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Postmodernism is good as a springboard to belief. Pragmatism leads the way out of postmodern inertia. The academic disciplines exist and we don't know anything better until some other discipline or some change in an existing discipline turns up. Humanities are more free of establishment inertia than are sciences and that is why we should invest more in humanities in schools and universities. Sciences and students can only benefit from the students' being aware of the history and philosophy of their scientific specialism.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
Freedom then becomes a prime goal for Postmodern philosophy. Understanding how to achieve it is a contentious point for Postmodern thought.
On the other hand, to the extent you emphasize that words like freedom become entangled in language itself...language out in particular worlds historically and culturally understood by individuals experientially/existentially in particular [often conflicting] ways...what does it then mean to speak of any "goal" at all, let alone a prime goal.

Here as well I insist that these world-of-words "language contraptions" be taken down out of the clouds such that in discussing how to "achieve" freedom [or justice] we make the whole point revolve around a context we are all likely to be familiar with. A controversial situation "ripped from the headlines" in which what some insist we ought to freely pursue others insist we ought to freely eschew.
Derrida’s understanding may be the most popular, which is that representation and language are inescapable–therefore making the achievement of freedom impossible. Most Postmodern thought stems from this initial position of Derrida’s, so the question then becomes: “If one cannot be free from the domination of language, how does one best find freedom?” The end is that each individual must find a relative truth for themselves; that is the best one can do to prevent themselves from being dominated through language and oppressive discourses.
Here, however, my own frame of mind is most controversial given the assumption "I" make that in attempting to "achieve" freedom and to find a "relative truth" myself all I succeeded in doing was fracturing and fragmenting my "self" given the arguments I make on these threads:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

Then the reactions of many here to that. Hostile to say the least. Why? Because I suggest that to the extent they are not fractured and fragmented themselves in regard to their value judgments they are likely to be objectivists. And in terms of my own existential rendition of "authenticity", that's a sham. That's a frame of mind they cling to in order to sustain the comfort and the consolation it brings them. What they believe is nowhere near as important here, in my view, as that they believe it. Left or right, liberal or conservative.

At least in regard to the most hotly debated issues.

Only I have no way in which to determine if I might myself be failing to grasp that my own conclusions here are just another example of someone [me] allowing himself to be dominated through his own language such that his own discourse is no less oppressive.

And wrong.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 4:29 pm Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
Freedom then becomes a prime goal for Postmodern philosophy. Understanding how to achieve it is a contentious point for Postmodern thought.
On the other hand, to the extent you emphasize that words like freedom become entangled in language itself...language out in particular worlds historically and culturally understood by individuals experientially/existentially in particular [often conflicting] ways...what does it then mean to speak of any "goal" at all, let alone a prime goal.

Here as well I insist that these world-of-words "language contraptions" be taken down out of the clouds such that in discussing how to "achieve" freedom [or justice] we make the whole point revolve around a context we are all likely to be familiar with. A controversial situation "ripped from the headlines" in which what some insist we ought to freely pursue others insist we ought to freely eschew.
Derrida’s understanding may be the most popular, which is that representation and language are inescapable–therefore making the achievement of freedom impossible. Most Postmodern thought stems from this initial position of Derrida’s, so the question then becomes: “If one cannot be free from the domination of language, how does one best find freedom?” The end is that each individual must find a relative truth for themselves; that is the best one can do to prevent themselves from being dominated through language and oppressive discourses.
Here, however, my own frame of mind is most controversial given the assumption "I" make that in attempting to "achieve" freedom and to find a "relative truth" myself all I succeeded in doing was fracturing and fragmenting my "self" given the arguments I make on these threads:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

Then the reactions of many here to that. Hostile to say the least. Why? Because I suggest that to the extent they are not fractured and fragmented themselves in regard to their value judgments they are likely to be objectivists. And in terms of my own existential rendition of "authenticity", that's a sham. That's a frame of mind they cling to in order to sustain the comfort and the consolation it brings them. What they believe is nowhere near as important here, in my view, as that they believe it. Left or right, liberal or conservative.

At least in regard to the most hotly debated issues.

Only I have no way in which to determine if I might myself be failing to grasp that my own conclusions here are just another example of someone [me] allowing himself to be dominated through his own language such that his own discourse is no less oppressive.

And wrong.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175006
Your use of English is constantly within the elaborated code.(Basil Bernstein)This in itself is enough to annoy certain persons who distrust academia and those who use the code of academia.http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~johnca/spc ... nstein.htm

The restricted code (Basil Bernstein) is best for expressing felt passions, poetic language, and the togetherness that itself engenders inauthenticity.
As communication occurs in groups and either the elaborated or restricted code is used, there is a degree of openness that is noticed. There is both the closed-role system and the open-role system. In a closed-role system, roles are set and people are viewed in terms of these roles, as well as expected to act in accordance with their role. In a open-role system, roles are not set or simple, they are fluid and changeable (Littlejohn, 2002).
Op cit.

So to use authentic language roles are open and "fractured". The restricted code acts like social glue.
Post Reply