DESTANDARDIZE LANGUAGE.

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Language Hackers, Unite!

In Linguistics, like everything, there can be said to be two opposing poles of thought, in this case, Prescriptivism and Descriptivism. The Prescriptivists "prescribe" how you should use your language like a doctor telling you how to take your medicine. The Descriptivists are more like "the Watcher" from the Fantastic Four series, a cosmically advanced alien whose sole purpose was to watch and record everything. In the early series the Watcher is occaisionally distracted by particularly rare or interesting events happening across the Universe. Like an anthropologist he pretends to be Truely Neutral about Everything and perfectly Objective, but he always winds up getting involved, like the time he told Mr. Fantastic that although he couldn't help him fight Dr. Doom, he COULD take him to a room full of advanced weapons.

By this example I mean to shew [ <- archaic British spelling of "show"] that linguists, like quantum mechanics, are hopelessly tangled up in the meat of their science. In particular any pretense to objectivity ... it is to laugh - Ha!! Ha! Ha!

A new orientation must be devised for language study. An active one, and an activist one; a wrecking ball of one or at least a lockpick set. Destructivism? Disengageivism? Attackivism? No: Destandardizationalism.

Language hackers, unite! This is our Rubicon. Look it up.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Disable All Spellchecks: The Language Destandardization Manifesto

Kindergartners should be taught how to disable a spellcheck in the first month of school. Perhaps for legal documents there could be a standardized language like Latin or the Queen's English whitch would wither up and die amongst the public parlance. Because otherwise mein freud I see no need for language standardization of any kind Least of all spelling.

People ask me how come if this site is about language destandardization, how come ALL of the words aren't spelled/used wrongly? I tell you. Because the object is FREEDOM. You MAY use/spell however you want here. Language is a game in many respects, and a "living" system. So why not?

What gives with peeple who get all pinched about spelling and the finer points of grammar? As if there was some Moral imperitive to it all, whitch there surely is Not. It is perhaps closer to a kind of internalized imperialist sense of linguistic manifest destiny, dig? They waste so much actual time on that shite - time when they could be Living. I condemn't.