Language is a very important tool for conveying information and ideas. But language also allows one to convey misinformation and other forms of alternate reality illusions. Are there any languages better designed for lying or is this more across the board? For example, French is often called a language of love, since the sounds of the words have this certain tone, regardless of meaning. Even an outsider can appreciate the smooth sounds even when insulted. Romance is sort of an illusionary game where you make promises you can't keep and say things that are not true, as part of the mating dance. I am not saying French is designed for illusions, but was just trying to give an example of what I meant. Are there languages better suited for the liar or do all language contain the full tool set for liars? How important have liars been for language creation?
I realize that you have prefaced this thread around language and it's ability to convey lies or intentional misinformation as well as information purporting to be a truthful representation. (Your perception of 'the mating dance' may well be truthful to you, yet it is not my perception. Honesty and truth, in any language, are most important to me.) As to which language better serves the purpose of liars......it might be interesting to see what others suggest. I am for all intents and purposes only conversant in English, and even with the best of intentions I observe that people encounter difficulty in conveying the truth as they perceive it. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Lying is a necessary part of being a human being, we can't invent a language in which it is not possible to lie.
We can invent languages where everything is true or a lie, but such languages don't allow us to have intelligent conversations. In interesting languages, you can construct paradoxical sentences like "This sentence is false." which can't be assigned self-consistently to the category of truth or falsehoods. And that's before we even get to the topics of exaggeration, shifting emphasis or poetical license and metaphor.
I don't see any good reason why you couldn't say that in any language. "This sentence is false" is no different in grammar or syntax from "This sentence is short" or "This sentence is funny." Truth and falsehood, inconsistency and paradox, deception and dishonesty, are not attributes of communication that are seriously affected by one's choice of language. In any language you can say, "The sky is green," "The moon rises in the west," "Tigers are herbivores," or "I am my own mother."
Depends on what one means by "language," but there are indeed formal systems in which reflexive truth-value assertions like that cannot be expressed. This is why Godel's incompleteness theorem only applies to formal systems with at least a certain level of power. Euclidean geometry, for example, is incapable of making statements about the validity of Euclidean geometry.
My "invented languages" mostly have examples in very small areas of mathematics. My "interesting languages" include all human languages that I am familiar with where it is possible to make "this sentence" the subject. I believe it is possible that in some cultures with strictly an oral language one would have to replace "this sentence" with "that which I am saying now" but I don't know of an obstacle to make a paradoxical utterance.
You can hardly make such a generalization about all "foreigners." Everyone regards the sounds of a language through the filter of their own language's phonetics. Both English and German would sound "harsh" to a monolingual Hawaiian (if there are any living Hawaiians who aren't also native anglophones) because of the bewildering number of consonants (Hawaiian has only H K L M N P and a glottal stop) which, moreover, occur in ear-assaulting clusters of two, three or even four. To a Chinese, they probably both sound like the ravings of a crazy person because of the undisciplined use of tone to express emotion. To a Czech, they probably both sound rather mellifluous with their ridiculously generous placement of vowels: every English or German word contains at least one! But to a Dutchman, a Frenchman or a Swede, German probably sounds considerably more "harsh" than English. We don't have the tense umlauted vowels, we don't have the gargled R of the more prominent German dialects, and we don't have either of the aggressive phonemes spelled CH in German--although lately we've been adopting a lot of words with the KH sound from Russian, Arabic, etc. Some Italians and Japanese think American (but not British) English sounds downright lazy because it's spoken so much more slowly than their languages. Some of the foreigners I have tutored say that English is in a class by itself because of one single word that they will never be able to pronounce: squirrel.
Heh. That word is actually difficult to pronounce, once you start thinking about it too much and then try to say it. Thing is that it rolls off my tongue perfectly in ordinary circumstances. EDIT: Damn it Fraggle. My strike rate seems to be going down the more I say it. If I lose the ability to correctly pronounce this word I'm blaming you.
It is funny you bring up the french for the Haitian in there creole language they have an expression about the french speaking peoples . I forget the expression but what it means is the french use lot of words to say nothing . People of talk and no action. Promises not kept by new language . If you think about politics in general you might find it is not just the french , but more of a mind set of legitimacy. If you can't cloud the issue baffle them with bull shit. We all try to justify our lives . I do to Bell ( Edit : I am an idiot Emos is the one I believe ) so she won't count Me out with the old dish towels that smell of e-coli(
Blame is what you do when you try to convince your self you are not responsible. But then again I like blaming Fraggle for every thing . Good thing he is well matured. House broke
Literature is often the place where new words and phrases are introduced to help condense a nuance of meaning needed by the plot. It may have a fantasy beginning and then shift to truth applications as people get used to the meaning. Sometimes bigger words are used to say what could be said with smaller words. Although the choice of the word, might be a wash when it comes to conveying meaning, the bigger words will give a prestige effect; subjective. This is sort of an illusion effect if meaning is the criteria for words. But if illusion is the criteria the fancy word will create a magic effect that sort of seems to imply intelligent. Another interesting language effect is connected to poetry and music. Sometimes it is not the words or the order, but the melodius sound of the word group. Weapons of mass destruction is almost like a madison avenue jingle. If we look at the words literally to infer meaning, we could be at a loss since some big bomb were not included even though very mass destructive compared to gas. But the jingle sounds good causing people to dream away from the literal meaning.. If one is not aware of the transposed meaning, they may go along with the literal, not knowing they are being fooled becauae, the song effect sounds pretty. You sing the song, since it is catchy but fail to think in terms of literal truth.
"Literature" includes more than fiction: My own definition would be any writing (or, today, other recorded language such as movies, video, music recordings, etc.) that is intended to transcend both time and place and be heard or read by a wider (both spatially and temporally) audience than the immediate listener(s)/reader(s). As such, literature makes deliberate use of literary techniques that comprise the craft of writing, which very few of us are adept enough to use in speech, such as simile, metaphor, alliteration and tricolons. The goal of literature is to make an impression, to stimulate thought. The techniques of literature are very language-specific. The tricolon, for example, is a monosyllable, followed by a polysyllable, ending with a phrase, such as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This technique can only be used in languages like English and French which have a huge inventory of one-syllable nouns. This is a cheap technique that should be used sparingly. If two words are literally synonyms, then the primary purpose of using the longer one in writing is to break up the monotony of using the shorter one over and over. To do this in casual speech is, indeed, pretentious. But very few words are perfectly interchangeable synonyms. While the denotative meanings may be identical, they may carry different cultural connotations. Look at the constantly shifting vocabulary of politics: How did "pro-life" come to have the narrow connotation of "anti-abortion"? Not quite correct: Nuclear bombs are first on the list. As I mentioned earlier, metaphor is one of the primary techniques of literature. "Life is a highway." "I'm married to my job." "Baseball is America's religion." "My dog owns me." The whole point is to expand our frame of reference to see hitherto unnoticed similarities, in order to increase our understanding of the complexities of life and the universe. In other words, deliberate transcendence of literal meaning is a tool of literature.
