From: Craig Presson (c_presson@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Jul 09 1999 - 14:40:41 MDT
--- Martin Anso <martinanso@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
> E-Prime seems to me to be overly complicated compared to the alternative
> of developing our thinking to the point that all participants in a
> communication know that their contributions are subjective. i.e., when
> I say "She is beautiful" I know, and expect others to recognise that I
> consider her beautiful, not that she is objectively beautiful.
Many times we make statements like "She is beautiful" mainly to see if others agree. "Is it
just me, or is it hot in here?"
The difficulty of changing mental habits continues to amaze me. While I don't often evangelize
for E-prime or anything like it, I find it a relatively cheap way to highlight a certain
kind of inflexible and conventional thinking. So I don't see E-prime as an _alternative_
to developing our thinking, just as one tool among many.
By the way, Korzybski, the founder of g.s., thought E-prime missed the point. He had a great
deal of theory built up about how the insights of g.s. could improve people and culture, and
to him the issue of identification went much deeper than grammar. He wrote in his own
idiom which takes most people a great deal of effort to understand. In this (only), he reminds
me of Bucky Fuller.
Probably ferreting out certain incorrect identifications from speech just drives the problem
underground. Every time I use an adjective, I make an opportunity for an unexamined
identification. Another writer in the g.s. community averred that once you have given up
the 'is of identity,' the next priority is to take a hard look at uses of the verb "to have."
I can understand the desire to scrap natural language and start over. Think we should have
a serious look at lojban? It ought to appeal to this crowd - an opportunity to join a
very small elite, that of fluent lojban speakers. So few understand us anyway ...
FCP
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