Just a quick rant and drive-by-insult.
Nota Bene: The following was written in an inexplicable ranting frenzy of annoyance. I went a bit far, I admit, and apologise. I do not, however, retract.
Joi speaks of language and land as a "commons" in a short post and semi-quotes N. Scott Momaday:
He also said that from a Native American perspective, land was a commons and language was a commons. Land was where we come from and return to. Language was where we lived. (He said it much more poetically than I can, but I can't remember exactly what he said.)
Beautiful. Love it.
Then comes along one Michael Wilson and says:
It's cute, it's clever, but it isn't correct. Not in a general semantics sense, not in semiotics, and anyone that's tried to introduce new terms or langauge shifts also recognizes it just ain't so.
I am reminded of one of my favorite movies, "Dead Man", wherein Nobody, the Native American played by Gary Farmer, keeps refering to Johnny Depp's character, William Blake, as "Stupidfuckingwhiteman".
Stupidfuckingwhiteman.
Language exists as an organism exists: it evolves, grows and dies in accordance to it's environment. We as a commons (as a group, as a community, as a mass of disparate elements) create that environment. Your puny little comment of "anyone trying to introduce new terms or language shifts also recognizes it just ain't so" is not only shortsighted, but patently false. You mean you've NEVER had your peer group adopt an expression from you? Loser. You mean you've never seen an entire cultural shift take root from one or two words in a marketing campaign? Open your eyes and ears!
Not to mention a million other examples of how collective usage defines language.
Either you didn't understand at all what was said, have little to no knowledge of semiotics, semantics and the entire field of linguistics, or your puny faux-logic-strangled brain can't see beyond it's own ego.
Either way: Stupidfuckingwhiteman.
