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Against change: Language and Limits
Like any language act, resolutional terms are deterministic. They do not
force meaning. They do not allow me to _guarantee_ the ground that my
novices will experience. Pat & Meany are right: Language cannot be
reified as a fence, no matter how many circles we draw on the chalkboard
in topicality lectures. Limiting terms are at best, a rough guide.
My argument however is that a rough guide is exactly what we are looking
for. And a directional action term provides a better rough guide than
does an explicit omni-directional term like "change."
Pat notes,
>the bottom line is that increase and decrease do not restrict a topic
>any more or less than change does. Case in point: Oceans
>
>on this topic which included the verb phrase increase development, we
>saw such cases as stop fishing, install turtle-proof nets, [etc.]
Right. 'Increase' needs to modify something and that term needs to have
some identifiable meaning. On the oceans topic the community quickly
decided that 'development' should mean 'make more useful or beneficial,
improve' and the topic was functionally reduced to "Resolved that we
should go snag ourselves some advantages in the ocean!" The
directionality promised by 'Increase' was quickly quashed by
'development.' "Development" is at such a high level of abstraction that
it didn't carry _a lot_ of meaning to say "Development Bad" as a story.
Despite this, as I recall it for all its lexical ambiguity "development
bad" did serve as first link for many a novice shell, and as a result was
a confidence-builder for the possibility of negative argument. It sounds
like Pat knows something about the importance of confidence builders for
early debaters (nice work).
I believe that a clearer expectation could be created if the term was
something other than 'development.' Terms like 'human rights' 'security
assistance' 'trade' are all flexible moves in the language game, but they
sound more predictable to me.
We don't need a guarantee. We just need a peg on which to hang that
all-important feeling of preparedness. 'Change' is a bad peg.
--Ken
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Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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