A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I went with some friends to see Star Wars and was, like most of us at that time and in that day, blown away.
The special effects, the costumes, the this, the that, ...
The fact that humans and non-humans could talk and understand each other.
Ugh?
Yeah, don't you remember that Luke, Obiwon, Han and everybody else spoke to machines, were understood, and that machines (with the exception of C-3PO) chirped, twitted (dear gosh!), tinged, dinged, warbled, woofed and guffawed and that the humans and assorted others understood what they were communicating? Specifically that humans and machines communicated and understood each other?
This came to mind recently because, while playing cards with some friends, my cellphone chirped in the next room. "What was that?" "My cellphone telling me it's fully charged."
And I put down my cards because I realized I understood my cellphone's language. It also has different rings depending on who's calling me. More language. And my microwave has its own language that I understand, my car, my computers, my office appliances, ... The list is pretty long, really.
(You'll have to excuse me for a minute. My mp3 player just told me it's finished loading new music)
Now take a moment and reflect on history, on expansionism and colonialism and all those other "-isms" by which we've come to be who we've come to be.
Linguistically, the conquered always learned the conqueror's language.
LA Story.
If I set my phone to say the name of who's calling, "Susan Carrabis" sounds like "SOOsa-a-a-a-a-an-n-n-n Kuh abscess". Learning my language it's not.
But think about that. The conquered learn the language of the conquerors.
And we understand what the chirps, cheeps, bleeps, and fleeps of our information age technologies mean.
And in lots of cases, when our devices bleep, blurf and poo we ask the real, live human we're actually dialoguing with to excuse us so we can... attend our masters!
Whoa!
(And for a bit about linguistics in the Political Season, see NextStage's Political Analysis blog)
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