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Closed Language Systems
A closed language system is an interesting thing. You almost certainly use one yourself: it’s basically the phenomenon whereby people in a social group somehow understand each other despite the fact that what they’re saying doesn’t actually *mean* anything and yet somehow (and often against all the odds) you figure out rapidly what that person means.
Case in point - and my aunt really is a master of this sort of statement - “oh, can you go and get me the thingy”.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I have stared blankly at her and tried to figure out what the thing could possibly be, and yet somehow I usually arrive at the right decision and respond accordingly.
Of course, you could sit there and go “well, if she’s about to whisk eggs then she’d logically want you to get the egg whisk” but that’s not quite it. Because my aunt’s mental processes are very rarely routed in whatever’s happening at the time, the context is never immediately apparent. She could just as easily want me to get a screwdriver or an iPod or whatever.
It’s quite an art.
This morning my flatmate demonstrated a knowledge of me which indicates that we too have a genuinely closed language system. Prior to leaving for work he had cause - from a completely different room in the house - to decode a vocalisation of mine which showed he had precisely located the likely events which would lead me to make such a noise.
The noise in question - let loose as I rummaged in my bag looking for my work door pass - can only be expressed in letters as “wuh-hurghh!”
After which there was a noticeable flurry of activity and pause, after which a voice drifted along the hallway from the front room with the simple enquiry: “spider?”
He was spot on.
It seems spider season has begun. Gah!
Posted on June 2, 2008 | Filed Under My So-Called Life, The World we Live In
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