Every culture has its own rituals, dances and songs... and its own words, which say something definitive about that culture. America is no different, although some nostalgic skeptics might point out that the modern technological culture of the US is really no culture at all. However, this issue is a different, yet contentious, one. And I have, instead, an evening date to catch, to scrutinize this issue right now!
A sample:-
As a part-time job, I will be teaching in a community college in a few months, and a few days ago determined to get away from my sleepy afternoon, I decided to visit the college campus. Since I had no other go, I boarded an intra-city bus which took me to the college, even though its campus was about 20 miles away from my house. I was impressed with the service, and aspiring to catch the same route number on the way back home, I hoped to know the bus timings. One of the passengers informed me that the driver might have a pamphlet which would give me the required information. As I was getting off the bus I had the following conversation with the driver:
I: May I get a copy of the route guide, please?
He: Say what?
I: The ROUTE guide please?
He looked at me intently, with a look of abandonment.
I: You know the sheet with the bus timings and everything.... do you have that?
A sparkle in his eyes, and Eureka !- he understood me! But at this point - and this is vital for the subtle ones - he did not just give me the route guide, but rather he clarified the terminologies first, and only then he gave me my trophy.
He first asked: You mean a SCHEDULE INFORMATION? -- as if the term schedule information has no synonyms, and has an extra-lingual meaning independent of how people might freely use that term. But this is typical of the Frei-landers to always seek the right words to execute the appropriate deeds, in a similar way an animal or a computer produces the right response only to the appropriate stimulus. Perhaps, a result of over-technologicalization (!), which prevents the constructed mind to step out of the limits of normal, normative discourse, in order to think and feel and say. The irony of the Frei-land! - which may be contrasted with the playful discourses and languages of the lesser-technologicalically driven countries like the old India - where one sometimes feels that people never mean what they say, and never say what they mean. And how could it be otherwise? - a word sometimes has the same word as both the antonym and the synonym! But has anyone fathomed this culture? A challenge.
Tab
