Klarinet Archive - Posting 000097.txt from 1999/05
From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Coughy, or ti?
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 09:42:57 -0400
On Mon, 03 May 1999 20:44:52 -0500, clmccurdy@-----.com said:
[snip]
> ....if you really want to rip at someone for how they choose to type
> the format of an email then log on to aol and look at the new jargon
> popping up every day...........it must be ok (oh excuse me i forgot to
> put periods in, o.k. and capitalize I).....obviously someone thinks
> the jargon is ok becuz lol is now in the dctnry......
[snip]
> just my 2 sense (no i didnt mean cents)
Notice, however, that your final joke only works because we have
conventions of spelling, even though you felt you had to explain it a
little.
We follow conventions usually in order to make things clearer, and the
conventions of capitalisation, periods and paragraphing exist for that
reason. The pattern-recognition that we are so good at is used to help
the reader segment a chunk of text according to its logical structure,
in the absence of the cues we normally have available in speech. So
there is a fundamental reason why we follow those conventions.
However, there is a bonus, because the existence of conventions also
allows us to flout those conventions to expressive effect, as in the
poetry of e e cummings and the famous final passage of Ulysses. But
this relies on there already being a norm that we may go against.
Something similar happens in music. The 'normal' hierarchical structure
of a classical bar needs to be present both to give the music life when
nothing particular is going on, and also to generate a feeling of
tension when it is disrupted. If that structure isn't normally present,
then this opportunity is lost.
Another way that we can obscure the relationship between 'normal' and
'expressive' is to call attention to merely routine phrases by playing
them in such a way that they seem important.
A good example is how some players linger lovingly over the appoggiatura
in the seventh bar of the Mozart clarinet concerto slow movement, which
within the classical style is a gesture so commonplace as to be roughly
the equivalent of the spoken words, "Oh, I'll have coffee, thank you."
You can well imagine that a person who spoke those words, and others
like them, with deep emotional resonance, would find himself in trouble
being believed when he said later, "Darling, I've always loved you."
So expressive devices need to be balanced by normality. If expressive
devices become the norm, their power is eroded.
Going back to your case, if you use lowercase letters and absence of
periods as routine, then firstly you'll be less easily understood, and
secondly what you write will always have the quality of being
'distanced' from the community you write for.
....though, in fact, i can see that you're sensitive to at least
part of that because you use another articulatory device.....one that
you made up yourself....so that we wouldn't be tooooo confused.....
Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org
