Here are six repeated words: You want everything to make sense. Sense to everything you want make. The first is meaningful immediately because it is idiomatic; the second, not so much. Syntax makes the difference, and we don’t need Wittgenstein to explain that to us. Little children learn the principle that a meaningful language has a set of rules that native speakers follow—more or less. English speakers find the expressions of Yoda to be quaint.
Making sense is one way that we discern the validity of someone’s argument. Frequently, when TV reporters go to the street for interviews and solicit “reasons” for actions, we get two kinds of responses. The first is gibberish in a language punctuated by non sequiturs, incoherence, and convoluted syntax. The second is explanation in a language constructed of complete and inferred complete thoughts that are replete with familiar references framed by an idiomatic syntax. Unfortunately, gibberish often dominates the interviews.
Making sense requires coherence in and unity of expression. Yet, we still have a problem that proper syntax, coherence, and unity never eliminate: How do we handle a syntactically correct expression of obvious obfuscation?
Fifty years ago, the United Nations General Assembly met to discuss the ongoing 1967 Six-day Arab-Israeli War. The discussions pitted a highly articulate Ambassador Eban against a number of ambassadors from the Arab world, the Soviet Ambassador, and a few anti-Israeli ambassadors from other countries. Probably few people have ever been able to express themselves as effectively as Eban did in such a hostile environment, but his arguments, however well-constructed, coherent and unified, fell on deaf ears. It was only a stunning military action that left the UN with no alternative but to move on to other matters. Guns won the argument.
Making sense doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes the spoken is out-argued by the unspoken. Almost every personal argument becomes the latest revival of those 1967 meetings in the UN. Regardless of the logic, the idiomatic syntax, the coherence, and the unity that make a statement reasonable, emotion—and sometimes action—wins. Such is the plight of many parents with wayward teens and teachers with belligerent students. It is also the plight of any who wish to help those following paths of addiction or crime and of numerous ideological opponents.
We have an ongoing problem. Within language there is a deep-seated and necessary order that native speakers know even when they do not use it in their expressions. Yet, regardless of the inherent order in language, disorder often prevails when people are emotionally committed to opposing points of view. It seems that perspective is always tinged with emotion and that, like the dominating gibberish of random people interviewed about history or current events, emotion dominates reason, syntax, coherence, and unity. Sense everything make you want to, but rules of syntax nonsense prevent only supposedly.
Making sense is one way that we discern the validity of someone’s argument. Frequently, when TV reporters go to the street for interviews and solicit “reasons” for actions, we get two kinds of responses. The first is gibberish in a language punctuated by non sequiturs, incoherence, and convoluted syntax. The second is explanation in a language constructed of complete and inferred complete thoughts that are replete with familiar references framed by an idiomatic syntax. Unfortunately, gibberish often dominates the interviews.
Making sense requires coherence in and unity of expression. Yet, we still have a problem that proper syntax, coherence, and unity never eliminate: How do we handle a syntactically correct expression of obvious obfuscation?
Fifty years ago, the United Nations General Assembly met to discuss the ongoing 1967 Six-day Arab-Israeli War. The discussions pitted a highly articulate Ambassador Eban against a number of ambassadors from the Arab world, the Soviet Ambassador, and a few anti-Israeli ambassadors from other countries. Probably few people have ever been able to express themselves as effectively as Eban did in such a hostile environment, but his arguments, however well-constructed, coherent and unified, fell on deaf ears. It was only a stunning military action that left the UN with no alternative but to move on to other matters. Guns won the argument.
Making sense doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes the spoken is out-argued by the unspoken. Almost every personal argument becomes the latest revival of those 1967 meetings in the UN. Regardless of the logic, the idiomatic syntax, the coherence, and the unity that make a statement reasonable, emotion—and sometimes action—wins. Such is the plight of many parents with wayward teens and teachers with belligerent students. It is also the plight of any who wish to help those following paths of addiction or crime and of numerous ideological opponents.
We have an ongoing problem. Within language there is a deep-seated and necessary order that native speakers know even when they do not use it in their expressions. Yet, regardless of the inherent order in language, disorder often prevails when people are emotionally committed to opposing points of view. It seems that perspective is always tinged with emotion and that, like the dominating gibberish of random people interviewed about history or current events, emotion dominates reason, syntax, coherence, and unity. Sense everything make you want to, but rules of syntax nonsense prevent only supposedly.
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