http://www.derwanderer.net/2009/10/23/saying-deadwood-in-chinese/ Der Wanderer in the Middle Kingdom Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:50:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 http://www.derwanderer.net/2009/10/23/saying-deadwood-in-chinese/comment-page-1/#comment-4450 Dault Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:44:21 +0000 http://www.derwanderer.net/?p=750#comment-4450 What a neat post! Actually, there is a philosopher, Jacques Derrida, who made a career out of exactly these sorts of phonetic ambiguities in French and English. He employed word plays that could only be distinguished in reading, but not by hearing. He did it for similar reasons to the scholar you mention here - to point out that our assumptions about meaning are never simple or clear. We are always embroiled irreducibly in context (which is exactly your point about why Si Mu was so hard to understand). I loved what you said about the language being "optimized for subterfuge" - that's brilliant! What a neat post! Actually, there is a philosopher, Jacques Derrida, who made a career out of exactly these sorts of phonetic ambiguities in French and English. He employed word plays that could only be distinguished in reading, but not by hearing. He did it for similar reasons to the scholar you mention here – to point out that our assumptions about meaning are never simple or clear. We are always embroiled irreducibly in context (which is exactly your point about why Si Mu was so hard to understand). I loved what you said about the language being “optimized for subterfuge” – that’s brilliant!

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