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Sesquipedalian #29
the SESQUIPEDALIAN Volume VI, No. 29
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Transit of Venus will occur (2012) June 6, 1996
HOW TO SPEAK AND WRITE POSTMODERN
by Stephen Katz, Associate Professor, Sociology, Trent University,
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
Postmodernism has been the buzzword in academia for the last
decade. Books, journal articles, conference themes and university
courses have resounded to the debates about postmodernism that focus
on the uniqueness of our times, where computerization, the global
economy and the media have irrevocably transformed all forms of
social engagement. As a professor of sociology who teaches about
culture, I include myself in this environment. Indeed, I have a
great interest in postmodernism both as an intellectual movement and
as a practical problem. In my experience there seems to be a gulf
between those who see the postmodern turn as a neo-conservative
reupholstering of the same old corporate trappings, and those who
see it as a long overdue break with modernist doctrines in
education, aesthetics and politics. Of course there are all kinds
of positions in between, depending upon how one sorts out the
optimum route into the next millennium.
However, I think the real gulf is not so much positional as
linguistic. Posture can be as important as politics when it comes to
the intelligentsia. In other words, it may be less important whether
or not you like postmodernism than whether or not you can speak and
write postmodernism. Perhaps you would like to join in conversation
with your local mandarins of cultural theory and all-purpose deep
thinking, but you don't know what to say. Or, when you do
contribute something you consider relevant, even insightful, you get
ignored or looked at with pity. Here is a quick guide, then, to
speaking and writing postmodern.
First, you need to remember that plainly expressed language is out
of the question. It is too realist, modernist and obvious.
Postmodern language requires that one uses play, parody and
indeterminacy as critical techniques to point this out. Often this
is quite a difficult requirement, so obscurity is a
well-acknowledged substitute. For example, let's imagine you want
to say something like, "We should listen to the views of people
outside of Western society in order to learn about the cultural
biases that affect us". This is honest but dull. Take the word
"views". Postmodernspeak would change that to "voices", or better,
"vocalities", or even better, "multivocalities". Add an adjective
like "intertextual", and you're covered. "People outside" is also
too plain. How about "postcolonial others"? To speak postmodern
properly one must master a bevy of biases besides the familiar
racism, sexism, ageism, etc.
For example, phallogocentricism (male-centredness combined with
rationalistic forms of binary logic). Finally "affect us" sounds
like plaid pajamas. Use more obscure verbs and phrases, like
"mediate our identities". So, the final statement should say, "We
should listen to the intertextual, multivocalities of postcolonial
others outside of Western culture in order to learn about the
phallogocentric biases that mediate our identities". Now you're
talking postmodern!
Sometimes you might be in a hurry and won't have the time to muster
even the minimum number of postmodern synonyms and neologisms needed
to avoid public disgrace. Remember, saying the wrong thing is
acceptable if you say it the right way. This brings me to a second
important strategy in speaking postmodern, which is to use as many
suffixes, prefixes, hyphens, slashes, underlinings and anything else
your computer (an absolute must to write postmodern) can dish out.
You can make a quick reference chart to avoid time delays. Make
three columns. In column A put your prefixes; post-, hyper-, pre-,
de-, dis-, re-, ex-, and counter-. In column B go your suffixes and
related endings; -ism, -itis, -iality, -ation, -itivity, and
-tricity. In column C add a series of well-respected names that
make for impressive adjectives or schools of thought, for example,
Barthes (Barthesian), Foucault (Foucauldian, Foucauldianism),
Derrida (Derridean, Derrideanism).
Now for the test. You want to say or write something like,
"Contemporary buildings are alienating". This is a good thought,
but, of course, a non-starter. You wouldn't even get offered a
second round of crackers and cheese at a conference reception with
such a line. In fact, after saying this, you might get asked to
stay and clean up the crackers and cheese after the reception. Go
to your three columns. First, the prefix. Pre- is useful, as is
post-, or several prefixes at once is terrific. Rather than
"contemporary buildings", be creative. "The Pre/post/spacialities
of counter-architectural hyper-contemporaneity" is promising. You
would have to drop the weak and dated term "alienating" with some
well suffixed words from column B. How about "antisociality", or be
more postmodern and introduce ambiguity with the linked phrase,
"antisociality/seductivity".
Now, go to column C and grab a few names whose work everyone will
agree is important and hardly anyone has had the time or the
inclination to read. Continental European theorists are best when in
doubt. I recommend the sociologist Jean Baudrillard since he has
written a great deal of difficult material about postmodern space.
Don't forget to make some mention of gender. Finally, add a few
smoothing out words to tie the whole garbled mess together and don't
forget to pack in the hyphens, slashes and parentheses. What do you
get? "Pre/post/spacialities of counter-architectural
hyper-contemporaneity (re)commits us to an ambivalent
recurrentiality of antisociality/seductivity, one enunciated in a
de/gendered-Baudrillardian discourse of granulated subjectivity".
You should be able to hear a postindustrial pin drop on the
retrocultural floor.
At some point someone may actually ask you what you're talking
about. This risk faces all those who would speak postmodern and
must be carefully avoided. You must always give the questioner the
impression that they have missed the point, and so send another
verbose salvo of postmodernspeak in their direction as a
"simplification" or "clarification" of your original statement. If
that doesn't work, you might be left with the terribly modernist
thought of, "I don't know". Don't worry, just say, "The instability
of your question leaves me with several contradictorily layered
responses whose interconnectivity cannot express the logocentric
coherency you seek. I can only say that reality is more uneven and
its (mis)representations more untrustworthy than we have time here
to explore". Any more questions? No, then pass the cheese and
crackers.
-\-/-\ SEMANTICS WORKSHOP \-/-\-
Barbaria Stiebels will give a talk in the Semantics workshop on
June 10, 1.15-3pm, Cordura 104. Title and abstract follow. All are
welcome!
"Verbal modification by preverbs"
Barbara Stiebels, Stanford/Duesseldorf
Semantics Workshop - 06/10/96
In my talk I will show which insights the complex verbs (prefix and
particle verbs) provide in the structural, semantic and conceptual
properties of verbs and their lexical modification. The German
preverbs can be divided into three subclasses according to their
semantic composition with the base verb and their effects on its
argument structure: pure aspectual markers (ein Buch anlesen 'to read
a book partly'), lexical arguments saturating a predicative argument
of the base verb (den Hut aufsetzen 'to put the hat on', den Park
durchwandern 'to walk through the park'), and lexical adjuncts, which
are integrated into the verb by an additional step of argument
extension of the base verb (sich einen Preis erschreiben 'to win a
prize by writing', sein Vermoegen verspielen 'to gamble away one's
fortune'). The morphosyntactic properties of the preverbs (prefixes
vs. particles) do not play a role in their semantic potential; both
types of preverbs may occur in all three patterns. The heterogenity of
the preverbs clearly suggests that there can be no unique (syntactic)
mechanism to derive all patterns of complex verbs (e.g. Small Clause
analysis, preposition incorporation), but the standard operations of
Functional Application and Functional Composition, together with the
additional operation of Argument Extension, suffice to grasp almost
all of the patterns.
The modification of verbs by preverbs confirms the findings of
Rappaport Hovav & Levin (1996) that activity verbs may be semantically
enriched by various types of semantic predicates, whereas change of
state verbs can only be modified by preverbs that further specify the
result state encoded in the verb. I pursue a modular approach in which
the generation of complex verbs is not restricted in any way by a
lexically encoded semantic selection of the verbs or preverbs.
Instead, I assume that complex verbs are freely generated by the
semantic composition of the lexical entries of the preverbs and the
base verbs. The resulting verb is evaluated in its argument structure,
its aspectual properties and its conceptual coherence and
plausibility. This approach can also account for the restrictions in
the iteration of preverbs. I will illustrate the various factors in
the formation of complex verbs with some very productive patterns in
German. Moreover, I will point out some additional properties of the
lexical modification of verbs (e.g. its semantic domain). The analyses
I propose are embedded into the framework of Lexical Decomposition
Grammar (Wunderlich 1994).
-\-/-\ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS \-/-\-
-- Columbia University Society of Fellows in the Humanities:
Postdoctoral Fellowships 1997-98
*renewable for 2nd year
*must have rec'd Ph.D. between Jan 1, 1991 to July 1, 1997
*stipend = $30,000 (1/2 of teaching, 1/2 for independent research)
*add'l funds available to support research
To get an application, write to:
Director, Society of Fellows in the Humanities
Mail Code 5700
Columbia University
2960 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
Deadline: October 15, 1996
-\-/-\ TRUE LINGUISTICS \-/-\-
Kid calls downstairs to his mother to bring up a book to read to him
before he goes to sleep. She brings up a book about Australia, something
of little interest to the kid. So he says:
"What did you bring me that book I didn't want to be read to out of about
Down Under up for?"
-\-/-\ JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS \-/-\-
(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
'jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)
-- CORNELL: REVISED job announcement, Phonology Sp97, Cornell
University. The Department of Linguistics at Cornell University
anticipates having a ONE-SEMESTER visiting position (at the assistant
professor level) in PHONOLOGY for SPRING 1997 (classes start 1/20/97
and final exams end 5/16/97). Duties will include teaching two
courses: (1) either an undergraduate phonetics/phonology course or
Phonology 2 (for graduate students and advanced undergraduates), and
(2) a graduate seminar. Ph.D. must be completed by DECEMBER 1996. A
letter of application, curriculum vitae, one publication, and three
letters of recommendation should be sent to:
Phonology Search Committee
Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-4701
To be assured fullest consideration, applications should be received by
JUNE 21, 1996. Include a self-addressed postcard for acknowledgment of
receipt.
For more information, contact Abby Cohn at acc4@cornell.edu
AA/EOE
(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)
-\-/-\ INSTA-PRIZE \-/-\-
-- LOOK INTO THE FUTURE: Reveal the secret message by choosing the
correct starting point and following adjacent letters up, down, left,
right, or diagonally.
K S F U T A I N
N T E T R E C N
I H H U E I S U
O P T R W E N O
N T O H T I O E
A I M I S S S M
Solution to THE SOLDIER'S RETURN: As one respondent put it, 'At least
10% of the regiment must be total losers.'
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