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Dillon McKinsey

Executive Producer and Host, KOOP Radio, 91.7 FM

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What are the consequences of the deconstruction of language on our capacity for meaningful civil speech?

Vacancy
For George Steiner
 
 
“Vacant metaphors, eroded figures of speech,  inhabit our vocabulary and grammar."
  George Steiner in Real Presences
 
  Sunrise and sunset—
  Lingual ghosts haunting hollow hearts
  Subsisting on special effects
  And  loud music
  As they romance the stone.
  Once, the word was real
  As  was  the animating force
  That satiated hungry souls
  When they were fed a poem.
  Now the microwaved buffet  of sound  bites and rap
  Is ours to nibble on.
  We are afflicted with a new scurvy
  On the mother ship.
  Social  insubordination
  And mutinous  ignorance
  And a willful disregard for life
  In all its forms.
  And all we can talk about
  Is more civil discourse.
  But the bit  is gone
  And our words have lost their power—
  What shall we say to halt the pale  horse?
 
Dillon McKinsey
February  8, 2011

Topics: Civil discourse language
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    Krystian Aparta 200+

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    Feb 17 2011: I was just going to comment that I loved the line about the animaling horse, and I was thinking about cave paintings and like the mental inspiration and curiosity in representation. But hey, it actually says "the animating force"! :D I don't know what meaningful civil speech is, and I don't think that we should worry about the anything of language, IMO such worries are always merely the result of mistakenly thinking that language is what we can hear (see in sign lg), read or write down, whereas it's really this honking monster of ongoing background processing that we are not aware of, and I don't think we can harm that easily in any way, or if we do, we wouldn't be able to judge it anyway.
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