> while i don't agree with Dennis's gripe entirely, i think his gripe worth
> keeping in mind in general. it's an old one here dennis--and it gets
> trotted out frequently. we _do_ get too isolated, to obscure. but it isn't
> about secret handshakes. it's simply about the fact that language is
> specialized. it isn't any different than the auto mechanics language. or
> the restaurant workers language.
Ok - but a couple of posts on LBO-talk recently have talked about the effects of certain ideas (e.g. 'the humanities') being denied to the poor. I'm inclined to think that the specialist languages that we throw around here are useful in seperating out various features of the world from a confused muddle of events - I can use the tool of this specialist language to grasp aspects of the world that are not easily expressable in auto mechanics language. So, what's the solution, to equip everyone with the necessary specialist language?
Yet, you yourself have acknowledged the role that specialised languages can act as tools of exclusion, delineation of boundaries. I've seen this happen very concretely. For instance, my impression is that the social base of our anti-evictions campaign in Tafelsig is built on the basis of the collective problem solving structures which already exist between women in the area. In this context, the women express themselves in a particular register (sometimes derided as gossip) which transmits solidarity, advice, information, etc. Through sociolisation, this group of women are quite conversant with the conventions of this register.
Enter a second register, that of 'political action'. Again, this is a gendered space, associated with men. The problems dealt with here include questions of leadership, winning support, building alliances which are public, 'political' rather than domestic and private. The rituals of inclusion and exclusion which maintain these registers act in a way which makes gender, race and class very apparent. Language operates to maintain a particular organisation of 'responsibilities', a particular framework of power.
In this context, how does one approach the question of language? I'm not at all sure myself. Certainly, something needs to change in terms of the ways people feel confident to speak - but merely learning to speak in a 'more priveledged' register doesn't seem a solution to me, in that it maintains the register/power hierarchy. The problem of the gulf between the 'specialist language' of left analysis and the 'everyday language' of 'our audience' has historically approached like a problem of translation - the academic or 'intellectual' translating their thoughts for popular consumption. Obviously this is necessary - but precisely this translation maintains the boundaries around the specialist language, priveledges the specialist.
So, where to from here... as I said, I'm not entirely sure.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844 k*256^2+2083 OpenPGP: 1024D/0517502B : DE5B 6EAA 28AC 57F7 58EF 9295 6A26 6A92 0517 502B