curious wrote:Linguistics is simply the politicising of utterances to create borders. Creating borders are simply the politicising of space and loosely speaking, linguistics is just one of the political tools that help maintain them.
Borders are the friends of the powerful states and an enemy to the people living within them.
Linguistic trickery and puns are the stuff that these political systems can't control and they have therefore made relatively and sociologically speaking, meaningless, except to the 'literate-clever'
Sorry to have such a downer on your rant, but that's how I see it.
Mt rant is... just people... in general... people piss me off... a lot and a lot more than usual, recently!
I think you mean "language" rather than "linguistics." Linguistics is simply the scientific study of language. I'm not sure what "...politicising of utterances to create borders" is called but it's not linguistics. Various languages, themselves, contribute to creating political borders, of course.
___________ is simply the politicising of __________ to create __________.
Ironically, you can stick any three loosely related terms in these blanks and come up with a pro/anti-government statement. For the most part, words are all we have with which to communicate (witness this game) so criticizing the very use of them (using words) is both bizarre and meaningless.
I would argue that "linguistic trickery and puns" are the last bastion of power for the masses. Stodgy political systems can't keep up with the lightening-fast changes in language taking place in the world of the proletariat, especially with present day communications systems.
"Linguistic trickery and puns are the stuff that these political systems can't control and they have therefore made relatively and sociologically speaking, meaningless, except to the 'literate-clever'" This sentence is so vague and filled with jargon that it is, itself, meaningless.
If the political systems can't control the "linguistic trickery and puns," then how are they managing to make them "meaningless, except to the 'literate-clever'?" Who are these "literate-clever" lottery winners, anyway? Academics? Rappers? Reporters? Bloggers? Surely not politicians and their hopelessly befuddled advisors and spokespeople.
I'll tell you who they are: the downtrodden. You cannot take language away from human beings or even begin to control it. The most that politicians can do is use language to lie.