Ambigamy

Insights for the Deeply Romantic and Deeply Skeptical

Jeremy Sherman is an evolutionary epistemologist studying the natural history and practical realities of decision making. See full bio

October 15, 2008, Personality

Comments on "Nounism: Taking THINGS too seriously"

Nounism: Taking THINGS too seriously

By Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D. on October 15, 2008 in Ambigamy

Last week New Yorker columnist George Packer noted that while Sarah Palin's syntax is mangled, more significantly it lacks verbs. It's mostly nouns. Read More

i agree

Submitted by farouk on October 17, 2008 - 3:54am.

the use of language can have big impact on people's moods, some words can even trigger certain emotional states while if they were said in another way, nothing could have happened

My favorite game

Submitted by Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D. on October 17, 2008 - 7:31am.

I've made a lifelong game out of that idea Fraouk. It's a little like one of those video games where you try to run the gantlet, through treacherous territory to reach some goal. I've leaned into the assumption that there's nothing that you can't say provided you find the right way to say it, and the object of the game is to find the right way to say it. It's like "speaking truth to power" but it's more than that. It's speaking your truth such that it has maximum chance of making a useful productive impression.

I don't really think that there's nothing you can't say if you find the right way to say it. Realistically a lot of things can't be said productively no matter how you say them. Still, I think we err on the side of cautious silence over skillful communication and I think the latter can bear more fruit than we assume.

Thanks for writing.

Jeremy

A horne'd turtle by any other name ...

Submitted by Ben Tremblay on October 22, 2008 - 8:27pm.

... would be as empty of reality.

But let me move this laterally: what about E-Prime ... do I have that wrong? Using language in a way that avoids all forms of "to be" as verb?

I internalized so long ago that "nouns are just verbs, misunderstood", I just can't attribute that idea.
But in any case: isn't the (dare I say "reification"?) solidification of "is" the opposite end of what you're getting at here? That using language in such a way concretizes our experience in a way that too often serves to validate pure delusion?

This is fascinating ... it /is/.

--bentrem

Is in moderation

Submitted by Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D. on October 28, 2008 - 4:34pm.

Bentrem,
Yes, it does come back to E-Prime now that you mention it. And reification is exactly the right word for what I was talking about. Also Platonism. I wanted to call new attention to it so I gave it the awkward name noun-ism. For rhetorical reasons I was re-reifying reification.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Maybe nouns are just really slow verbs. Verbs that stand still long enough that we can "is" them.

It isn't that they aren't. It's that they is to varying degrees of ephemerality.

Words can be fun for those who like that sort of thing.

Still,

Jeremy