First thoughts

Welcome to thoughts 'o jax. in my inaugural address, perhaps i will begin by introducing myself, and some topics i'd like to take up here. if i didn't write down some of the things i'd like to take up here, i'm afraid they would fall out of my head.

you can call me jax. i live in austin, texas, the closest there is to a haven for free thinkers in texas. by trade, i am a speech scientist. there are a hundred different ways to 'name' my job, but basically i study speech, language, hearing, and all of the cognitive processes associated with communication primarily in people who have had strokes, brain injuries, etc.

In my limited experience with blogs, mostly i see blogs as a forum for rants about bloggers' pet peeves, things they don't like, or about how things used to be different. my friend scott likes to complain about how the flavors for gatorade used to be much simpler. with all due respect to him, who cares about gatorade flavors? they still have orange and lemon-lime, so we're ok. having said that, the dislikes i bring up here will probably be trivial to one person or another, so having caveated that (i like to verb words) here goes.

- language. it's a fascinating thing. i'm not one of these people who thinks your grammar should be all good and stuff. probably the most important thing about language is that it communicates a message. i love the fact that language is an infinitely creative system, that you can formulate a sentence that has never been said before. i like the fact that the meanings of words change, that old words come to mean new things, that words can change parts of language.

take, for example, my comment above that 'i like to verb words'. i stole this from calvin and hobbes. at present, i don't remember what the reference was. note, in this sentence that the word 'verb' has the grammatical function of a verb. ironically, the usual grammatical function of the word 'verb' is a noun. the phrase means, i like to make verbs of words that are not verbs (usually nouns).

this is a creative change of language. this is something being done for a purpose to be communicative. it breaks the rules of language, but who cares?

my general permissiveness about language does not extend to every linguistic bastardization, however. let me explain why. some 'errors' in language form and use have the function of obscuring truth, being subversively persuasive, or of being reduced to a filler word/phrase, or a word/phrase that has no meaning but is there to take up space.

let's take some examples of words that have the function of obscuring truth. there's even a name for these: euphemisms. makes it sound like something it's not. temporary refund adjustment. my mind blanks on others right now

wordphrases that are subversively persuasive: noo-kyuh-luhr. my understanding is that dubya didn't always say nuclear this way. the mispronunciation of noo-kyuh-luhr has a cultural function of identifying people with a political affilitation, or with a particular foreign policy stance. why? does this pronunciation make the word sound scarier? we don't talk about the noo-kyuh-luhr family, do we? the distinction begins as a conscious one, but becomes unconscious. that scares the crap out of me. there are plenty more where that came from.

what about wordphrases that have come to be meaningless? this is maybe the opposite of euphemisms. they're phrases people say to make them sound smart, but instead of being loaded with extra irrelevant meaning, they mean nothing. i had a stats professor a few years ago that used to mis-say the phrase: six of one, half dozen the other. she liked to say, instead: one-half six, a dozen the other. the phrase is meant for the purpose of indicating that two things are the same: two different ways of saying six are: a) six, and b) half dozen. in contrast, one half of six is actually three, which is different than a dozen, which is twelve! when people don't realize the meaning of the words that they are saying, and they are supposed to be authority figures, and people who are persuading others, i consider it to be scary AND irresponsible.

okay, well enough about that. what else will i address here?

- adam's favorite writers, musicians, people

- tv shows that once were good and suck later on
- why i don't like the stripping industry or sex on tv
- why UT football is so over-rated
- more to come...

enjoy my thoughts. they are very persuasive. yes, very persuasive....