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possessivesuffix · 4 years ago

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Limits of Uniformity

The notion of a “uniform proto-language” does need some sanity checks regardless. Namely, how uniform can any language variety be even in principle? What is the actual uniformitarian fall-back point on this? (Reminder: the uniformitarian principle is a key guideline of all investigation of prehistory, which states that we can only assume “kinds of” prehistorical states whose existence is known to us today too.)

Areal uniformity is the one type that we can write in by definition, once we recognize “a proto-language” to be quite possibly just one among several areal variants (as discussed in the previous post).

Some languages, usually small ones with some hundreds of speakers in just a handful of towns or clans can be also areally uniform altogether, but this is probably not the sociological setup to assume for proto-languages that have later expanded into families of hundreds of thousands of speakers. Latin is again the one notable exception, not the rule. Maybe a few more could be assumed for families that have expanded “far but not wide”, e.g. Proto-Oceanic or some of its daughter proto-languages; Proto-Inuit perhaps.

Sociolectal uniformity is not an especially tough nut either. This can exist in languages, but does not at all have to, and only seems to come about in various hierarchically stratified societies. Latin very likely had variation of this kind, and e.g. Proto-Indo-Aryan almost certainly did, too. “Genderlectal” differences could be another axis, but this is again not at all required to assume and I’m not aware of any cases where this would be clearly reconstructible. (I would have a hypothesis to pitch on this re: the fairly odd relative terminology of Proto-Uralic, but more on that at some later time.) So this is, while perhaps an underappreciated possibility, probably not a major problem in proposing a uniform proto-language.

Phonologically uniform varieties certainly exist. Phonology is fully structural: anyone’s idiolect either has or does not have any particular phonemic contrast. Variation across a language can be also usually described by some smallish enough number of these that it’s just about mathematically guaranteed that there will be multiple people who share the exact same phonological system. E.g. 10 binary phonological isoglosses only allow for a maximum of 1024 different phonological systems (in practice variants also are not distributed entirely randomly). Hence it’s always valid to aim for reconstructing an unvariable proto-state from variable daughter systems. In practice this is the strongest method of linguistic reconstruction also due to the additional fact that regular sound changes at least exist (while no such thing does in morphology, semantics etc.)

Morphological and syntactic (”grammatical”) uniformity seems similarly existent at first, but beyond “core grammar” these actually start leaving a lot of corner cases. Irregular formations and idiomatic constructions exist, and rarer ones probably aren’t known across an entire speaker community. Worse, it’s possible for different speakers to analyze the exact same construction as either fossilized or incipiently or residually productive, or indeed productive in different ways. Are e.g. happy and hapless two separate words, or two derivatives of a common root lexeme √hap-? Is /wʊdəv/ a single word, a word with a clitic would’ve, two words would have — or even would of? We do not have single unique answers to these even today. Some reconstruction of (some sub-variety of) Modern English by future linguists would not need to be able to do so either.

So we have to allow for some grammatical variation in any language variety. All variation is only finitely old here as well, but the point where all attested grammatical variation converges to a single form could be far deeper back in history than phonological uniformity. Trying to strive for uniformity would be somewhat analogous to trying to reconstruct a last common ancestor form of hands and feet (some undifferentiated sea worm body segments, 500M+ years ago) instead of a common ancestor population of modern humans (300K years ago, with hands certainly distinct from feet). In a more explicitly linguistic example, I have in a recent paper argued that variation in modern Finnish in the morphology of the verb ‘to stand’ (two competing stems seis- versus seis-o-) is in part inherited all the way from Proto-Uralic already.

Lexical uniformity is a simple case again, but now in the other direction. This simply does not exist as soon as we look at more than one person’s idiolect. Every adult speaker knows tens of thousands of lexemes, and some of these are used so rarely that there is pretty much no chance that any two speakers end up having the exact same lexicon, let alone the exact same semantics for each word.

Some weaker sense of “core lexical uniformity” could exist, but this depends on how exactly we define “core lexicon”, and is probably not a good idea anyway. Synonymy could be again stable for thousands of years and cannot be usefully reconstructed away; while if we look at divergences only, in some small list of words, we will probably end up at a point when “a” proto-language has already split into dialects that already clearly differ in their distribution, phonology, grammar and overall lexicon. Even core lexicon innovations will happily spread between lineages. The French loanwords animal, fruit, mountain and person are now universally known across English but arrived into the language in the Middle English period, clearly into multiple dialects in parallel. (This has already been taken into account in current lexicostatistic methodology in the form of a rule that all known loanwords should be discarded from analysis, though I am afraid this is probably too weak of a corrective move.)

Lastly lexical phonology might be the most challenging issue. By this I mean what phonological form do individual words have, even if they’re identical etymologically, morphologically etc. Examples from historically recorded languages show that these follow the exact same principles as grammatical or lexical variation. Forms like aks versus ask can coexist for millennia, and hence it’s not a good idea to try to reconstruct them all away. They probably do go back to some more or less regular sound change ultimately… but the way they end up in variation is mainly due to dialect mixing or analogical levelling. If some variants like these later on separate off into different varieties (ok, ask / aks have been at least partly sociolectally separate in English all along — maybe a better example would be something like dreamed / dreamt) they might give off the impression that there has been some phonological change to reconstruct as happening after the proto-language. Really this phenomenon seems to allow taking off quite a bit of load from the bin of “irregular sound change”.

There is also one telling sign for these: these never involve variation in the makeup of the overall phonology. People who use the form ask will still call the tool an axe, while people who use the form aks will still wear a mask (or at least will not turn this into ˣmaks). But this is only a hint, and it would be still hard to really rule out other hypotheses like a Proto-English **aksk that ends up being simplified in two different ways in different dialects / sociolects. And if we were to indeed assume the existence of a variety that had an early but regular metathesis rule — how far back would we put it, how many words would we assume to be later innovations or loans from a non-metathesis variety, and for that matter, could we even work out the direction of the metathesis without English-external evidence?

(I don’t even know what the real answer is. Sure enough it’s from West Germanic *aiskōn- and so ask initially appears to be more archaic, but e.g. the similar wasp ~ waps is instead from PG *wapsō. Do we require two metatheses in different directions, or one metathesis plus some hypercorrections against it, or one metathesis followed by one back-metathesis…?)

This should primarily serve as a warning against going into too small details when reconstructing the general scaffolding of historical phonology. My own rule of thumb remains that one example is no example, two examples are a pattern, three examples are required to call something an actual sound law.

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In any case we can see there will be still quite a bit of variation that should be allowed to perhaps have occurred in a “uniform proto-language”. The target is some realistic amount of grammatical and lexical coherence plus a uniform phonological system; and it may not even be too much of a problem if we still end up with multiple variant forms of some individual words. Hypotheses for explaining any remaining variation are always worth exploring, but we don’t need to nail all of them down in one specific way.

#historical linguistics #linguistic reconstruction #uniformitarian principle #variation #linguistics #methodology

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yespoetry · 5 years ago

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An Interview with Joshua Byron & Chariot Birthday Wish on Queerness and Art

By Joshua Byron & Chariot Birthday Wish

Editor’s Note: grammar and punctuation aesthetic have been largely preserved for authenticity and tone.

Joshua: We are chatting and checking in with each other on the 4th of July, a honeysuckled day of nostalgia, dogmatism, and fear. I recently began releasing a webseries Trans Monogamist with Alfredo Franco and Artless Media and Chariot Birthday Wish recently released his new book of poetry, hot pearl.

J: How is the weather in Philadelphia- if that's where you are now; it's so hot here in New York. I was invited to a million things but part of me just wants to try and drink some iced coffee and lay down and watch a Derek Jarman movie or something. Perform that kind of tired queerness.

I wanted to talk about your poetry, and your latest work, and also how your work maybe functions as haiku. I was reading Barthes on haiku recently who idolized haiku as a sort of perfect form. The perfect image, something that collapses time inward. And that makes me think of your work- a collapsed inward image. But also like, fun and bubbly. Effervescent.

C: It’s hot in, sticky in philadelphia, i am currently home now. were in the humid thunderstorm loop here but i dont think a storm is going to break for another few days. im going to go smoke weed on mikayla’s roof later today, other then that i've been playing katamari and drinking ice water while drawing all day.

people mention haiku to me a lot, because i write small, few word poems, with a focus on natural imagery. I honestly don’t read much haiku, and wouldn’t site it as a direct source of inspiration, or say that ive studied the form. i do think my work resonates with a similar drive and spirit of haiku though, and i hold a dear reverence for the form.

i love that quote “the perfect image” and “something that collapses time inward” my intent of form for writing poems is absolutely trying to expand a space, a moment, an emotion, memory, as wide and deep as possible with as few words as i possibly can. i really focus a lot on creating complete and whole worlds inside my poems, but its subtle because they are such small poems. my work has a lot of play in it, i think my tone of voice always has an air of play to it.

J: I think for me I think of the succinctness of your work, more so than scale. Sometimes your work even if it isn't about apocalypse, feels very tied to that, the event, the feeling, the fear, the expression of it and often I think your work has mechanical feelings in it, these references to the Matrix or like using human concepts in regards to natural things. I think a lot of some of your work that lists desires and those desires bend to human concepts, not natural ones.

I think that the bubbling of your work feels like it could go on forever, like how do you decide to end a poem or even a collection? In hot pearl or hell ship or i love you, here's a gigantic worm?

C: yes ! i think most of my work, comes from a place of constant consideration of apocalypse. And consideration of technology ! ive always been really inspired by and into sci-fi, cyberpunk ie: the matrix. i love to reference technology for sure. interweaving technology into nature and natural images, one function of that for me is about desire. desire for connection, for access. i think about texting my friends from the middle of the woods, and the simultaneous understanding of the link to earth + self, emotionally and also physically! But I also do think that technology and mechanics are a part of nature, and “the natural world.”

humans are a part of nature and we created these things. there’s this Bjork quote where she says that “You can use pro tools and still be pagan”. I’m really into the idea of using technology as tools of divination and holy connection with nature. I imagine a scene; being in moss, it’s absolute bliss, and then the connection of texting, sharing an image of moss with a friend, sharing that moment through cellular towers, and then that sneaking sense of apocalypse like earth Is going to melt.

and knowing that those moments of sharing and experiencing the absolute magic and heavenly nature of is not going to be possible anymore because humans are melting earth. I’m trying to hold all of these goods things weighted with that, the frantic fear of losing something so special. Its very cyberpunk to me. and then yeah !!!! its driven by desire! if i think of it now, a have a lot of poems that say “i want”i want so much...

with books, I usually decide on a number of pages first its very straight forward. im like okay this book is going to be 20 pages or 100 pages. with poems, if i read it and i have my emotions and vision echoed back to me, then its done ! I try to make myself cry, and I am always trying to write what I think is the perfect poem. i do try to spend a collective hour editing each poem, but usually i just know when its done. Not to be obtuse.

J: How do you think desire plays a role in the work that you do?

Your work has such striking images - things I think are (I hate this word) but striking and original. I'm thinking of even the word "hell ship" for instance or "hot pearl," the fag poem, "superintendent of the golf course," "my flowering boyhouse," and the specificity of the "i want.”

The images feel free from societal cliches and expectations, like a weaving of a fantasy world. I don't know if I have a question, I mostly just wanted to say that. It seems just very sprung from your mind, very specific. It's not that there aren't poetic traditions that predate or intertwine with yours, but I think in some ways it feels very Greek (Sappho, perhaps?) in its directness, in its wink, in its boldness.

I also wanted to hear you speak on the fag poem, it feels so essential and tears me apart.

C: i love to meditate on the feeling of desire, and feel desire. i also think that the reason i make art comes from a similar part in my emotional body as my desire. its an expression of that desire, as well as a manifestation of desire, i really long to create art and i love to make art about desire. its such a full and intricate emotion.

Recently I read a definition of “eros” as the opposite of “death wish” the antithesis of the call of the void, that eros is an absolute will to live and desire to experience. That’s the well of desire I channel my creativity through. which i think relates a lot to your mention of sappho. i read a lot of sappho, her voice and her form (specifically too how we just have fragments of her poems, and what that does to the form of her work) has something that i draw a lot of inspiration from. absolutely the way she, and other translations of greek text (ive been reading the iliad for 2 years).

i do also 100% imagine all of my poetry to take place in a specific and complete realm, in a fantasy world. that idea, of creating a whole separate place, lexicon, and memeplex was one of my first visions and drives as a poet.

the fag poem: i also started it with wanting to write "a fag anthem" which is not usually how i write poems, with a specific thesis for the poem. its an ode to faggots, a faggot declaration, but one from a place of reclamation driven by pain.

J: How do phones play a role in your life or your poetry? Your poems do include references to downloading pics of horses, or texting in the woods, or just texting or staring even. but i also wonder about the idea of writing on phones and what that means poetically and structurally.

What is your relationship to social media and Instagram? it mystifies me! you have a following and i wonder how that feels and how that is tied up in art-making, glo worm, distribution, and if it matters to you or if you have any feelings of community or fracture over how the internet works? In regards to the above, what are your thoughts on looks, or pulling looks? The politics, the aesthetics, the joys of looks? Are you pro look? Anti-look?

C: its a little trick of mine to add a reference to a phone in a poem. i think that phones are so intimate. i have an intimate relationship to my phone, and theyre magically little devices. i try to capture that magic when referencing "downloading pictures of horses" or looking at pictures of birds on your phone. thats also tied to apocalypse though, sometimes im writing from a space of thinking about animal extinction, when certain animals are gone and but we still have access to photos of them on the archive of the internet. our phones being a connection to that archive.

i love social media. i love connection ! im def in the camp of holding closer to the positives of social media, outside of my paranoia about facebook and the surveillance state and like, influencers, etc. i just want to share my art with people and reach people. it feels good to be connected with people who like my art and to be an artist. i can unpack that for hours though.

There are times when being seen, and watched by a following is overwhelming. I think there can be a tendency for people to view you just as the single dimension of what they see online. I def have an online persona, and have built an image, altho thats also complicated and confusing because that image and persona is not a lie, just a crystallization of parts of myself. but I don’t really concern myself too much with that anymore. People can see me how they want. I am highly protective of parts of myself and my life

i love looks. i got into art as a kid because i wanted to be a fashion designer. as a transsexual gay faggot virgo born the week of beauty, aesthetics are very important to me ! in that, the play and fantasy of looks are important to me. i do believe that aesthetics are empty. especially in this year of 2019. and i think holding that in mind can create buoyancy for the play of looks, of pulling a look. its about fantasy and expression. i also find power in it. recently to combat my social anxiety, ill wear elf ears to non-costume events, as it subverts my paranoia of being stared at for being a fag freak. i like giving people a reason to stare at me, a fag freak.

J: Tell me about your influences. Who gives you visions? Tell me about the knife? tell me about Keanu Reeves, the Matrix, and your celebrity icons?

C: Techno music gives me visions, the ocean gives me visions, the forest, the planets give me visions. Bjork gives me visions, Bruce Springsteen, Gregg Araki, Wong Kar Wei, Anohni, Greek mythology, Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions, Kazuko Shiraishi, the color red, the color blue, Cocteau Twins, dream pop, pop music, Brokeback Mountain.

to me, the knife, is a perfect vision of pop +freakdom + communism + mysticism. Its apocalyptic gay communist dance music, deeply mystic lyrics. it's everything I search for in art in one project, I cannot believe the knife.

the Matrix, simply to me, is about following your destiny. to me it's about actualizing the godly calling, your godly calling, your vision for yourself. it's so virgo, bringing together the celestial and the earth.

Keanu is just so beautiful; i think it's a trans guy thing. me and him have very similar birth charts. i love my playful relationship with celebrity icons. i feel tepid to "stan" people and celebrities. Icons are false, kill your idols, blah blah blah. but its a gay thing also to have icons, and its a part of that fantasy.

J: Talk more about elf ears and giving people a reason to look at you?

C: id just rather give people something truly freaky to look out, rather than just the spectacle of my visibly trans body. its a transsexual thing for me for sure, or like informed by my medicalized trans body, modifying my body, fantasy cyborg, morphing my tool (my body)!

J: Are there any other body mods that really seem exciting?

Did you have a spiritual upbringing or have any spiritual practices now?

What does healing the earth look like to you?

What does healing self and community look like to you?

C: i love getting pierced recently..also obviously tattoos, as a tattoo artist and someone who gets tattoos. if they knew how to dick surgery good i would do that. maybe someday theyll get it. im getting top surgery this year.

i was loosely raised catholic. i do candle magic and ritualistic intention setting.

full ! communist ! revolution now ! fully paid reparations ! returning stolen land back to its people ! and high tech cleaning of the oceans, permaculture, rebuilding of the rainforests. returning Nikola Tesla’s ideas and designs back to the people.

community looks like responsibility. I’ve been thinking recently about how self healing happens with community healing, and when you put your time and heart into community, it heals your heart. I think we’re deep in a culture of individualistic healing, and it’s alienating. Workers of the world unite.

Chariot: what is your relationship to fantasy ? idle cosmopolitan, your first mini series, is full of ghosts, tarot readings, an alternate world. it felt like it was brushing against a suggestion of magic, also the way time + space is expressed in the series, it has a morphing quality. trans monogamist doesn't really carry those themes through, besides the astral projection class ( a little hint at the magic” is there still fantasy in this second work ?

J: I think for me I don't see Idle Cosmopolitan as that fantastical; how hard is it to believe a world with spirits of some kind? Even if they aren't expressed the way they are expressed in fantasy novels or TV. The everydayness of magic. For me, fantasy is similar to queerness in that it means possibility. Hope. Optimism through pain. Most fantasy is born through quests and pain, the classic Arthurian tale.

I think for me, that's the root of it. I read so much fantasy when I was kid. I was obsessed with Arthurian lore, castles, Pokemon, Digimon, the Green Knight, all of it. I think that Trans Monogamist is fantastical in some ways, I've heard Broad City described as a fantastical NYC, as has SATC and almost any show about people in NYC. So in that sense, yeah. Where every corner has people to date. And of course, while I do exist as a NB Carrie Bradshaw in real life, that concept is a sort of fantasy of its own.

C: What’s your relationship to technology and that aspect of film-making?

J: Technology worries me. I read Carceral Capitalism last summer and felt worried, as always, by the rise of surveillance and predictive policing. I think I understand why some people chose paths of craft over content, but I also don't think it's always a strict binary.

But to be fair, at a certain point you can often only know so much about one or the other. You can focus on learning more and more about craft and technology and lenses or you can focus on plot, characters, drama... Or you can do both! I just don't know that many people who end up able to do both. It's a lot of effort and time and money just to do that learning. I do think there are cracks for the light in technology to come forth. It's how we met! But I find myself often pessimistic about it. But I don't want to come across as a technology grump either. I can be modern occasionally.

C: do you think you are expressing a part your self through the main characters of your work? you act as both of them, i wonder what your relationship to self portrait is? if the self insert is significant or, how is that self insert significant to you? is it that no one else could properly portrays these characters?

J: I definitely think of my work as self-portraiture. I think part of it just that I'm making work about things that I go through, I'm making work DIY, and it can be easier (and harder) to self direct. It's also, of course, cheaper, than trying to find someone else and guide them to a place you feel deeply. I think for a while I felt uncomfortable about appearing in my own work but now I"m pretty numb to it. It just sort of feels like the kind of work that I'm making now. I think it felt required. If we're thinking of the path, we're thinking of flow, it just felt like the next step in making art.

Also, for me, it's important to make work specific and not too broad. I want to talk about what my queerness, what my life is like, and I don't want to speak for someone else at all.

C: what is your process like for writing, and editing your video work? you're a workaholic right? can you talk about that process ? your relationship to that?

J: I am such a workaholic. I mean we are doing writing work on the 4th of July!! I have three projects in different stages right now. Video work is usually much more collaborative. There's a free fall element to not having all the control. It's scary and it's also how I push myself to not be a total control freak and to push myself to be a better artist. I do believe in community and collaboration I just also have an intense drive to sort of speed through things and make and create and there's certainly an element of capitalism that has infused me with needing to DO things. It's not my best quality!

But it also is a strength. I like to create! And sometimes that urge is so strong that sometimes I do need to do things alone. I think it's important to balance collaborative work with solo work, you need outlets! So sometimes I write alone, sometimes I don't. My video work often involves at least 16 people in the cast. And Trans Monogamist was all about co writing and co starring with Alfredo Franco and having Artless Media being such a big guiding and production force.

C: What’s your relationship to tropes and pop?

J: I think I love tropes, astrology, SATC quizzes, all of those kinds of things. I think the boxes we fit in or don't fit in both do and don't speak about our personhood. Sometimes we put too much stock into them, sometimes too little.

Queer tropes of course are such a fundamental part of online queer culture and also can be so toxic but also very healing! I think the way queer culture fractures and floats online definitely influences my work, but I try to engage playfully. There are things in queer online culture I feel serious about- in terms of supporting funds that support black trans woman or fundraisers for surgeries. But in terms of other queer iconographies and categories I try to just absorb and play. I think little of my online presence has to do with replicating those memes or ideas.

If anything it's about crafting my own identity that picks apart at random things like Carrie, an occasional look. Trans Monogamist definitely skates around and jokes a lot about types of gays while also recognizing that RIver is their own type of gay and while River jokes about hating gay graphic designers or art gays, River is an art gay. It's just that claiming identity feels scary to River, so they sort of dash over or around it and try and just be a person. Someone described TM as a show that tries hard to categorize people.

I don't know how I fit. I'm an art gay I guess. Nonbinary sometimes seems to be ascribed its own internet aesthetic but I don't know how i fit in that or don't. If anything I think there are certain binaries of queerness that I do identify on.

C: What trope am I?

J: You're definitely an alt-art gay as well, but on a different side of things? There's def a type of gay that does tattoos, is trans, loves communism, and cowboy imagery.

C: right, what you said also got me thinking about tropes as language, theyre identifying words, and that shapes our understandings of ourselves and our experiences. and there is so much play i think, in queer culture between collective experience and personal experience.

J: I think I worry a bit about the ways we seem to gravitate towards locks and keys as ways of conceptualizing identity. And yet, I do that! So who am I to say that? I think it's best to let everyone feel their identity the way they feel it, even if that's not how I feel it. Right? What does that hurt/what does it heal? It certainly heals someone else and probably doesn't hurt me, excluding hatred, of course. Plus, sometimes someone's experience or a collective's experience help us- we say that's me! or that's definitely not me!

C: can you say more about territory? how does pop, or mass culture, bring us into territory?

J: What's the difference between populist and popular? Is there one? Can something that's populist be destructive, can it be healing? Is liking what the people like somehow revolutionary or is it bad? Are we as a people healing bending towards justice or not? It's a tricky counter situation. Plenty of things we probably think are good are considered bad, and vice versa. so sometimes seems revolutionary and sometimes doesn't.

But it does remind me of the way Bergman is against symbolism-reading in his work, Susan Sontag's against interpretation, Patti Smith's writing about not trying to read a message into literature. I'm not sure i wholly agree, but the idea of the sign as uninterpretable or as a mirror is interesting. Of course these are also mostly people with a romantic idea of art and plenty of people believe in interpreting art and for good reason. Works can be about race, class, gender, etc., and also have images that can't be broken down. It can be both.

Joshua Byron is a nonbinary storyteller based in Brooklyn. Their work includes the webseries Trans Monogamist co-created with Alfredo Franco and Artless Media, Idle Cosmopolitan with Glo Worm Press, as well as the zine Sincere Hate. Previously they have written dating columns and lyrical essays for Bushwick Daily, the Body Is Not An Apology, Yes Poetry, and more. Their films have been screened at Sarah Lawrence College, the Indianapolis LGBT Film Festival, Secret Project Robot, and more. They love Ursula K LeGuin, rose soap, and lots of coffee.

chariot wish is an artist and angel living in philadelphia. theyve seen the matrix 28 times in 2 years and love horses.

#Joshua Byron #interview #chariot wish

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dtswritingthing · 7 years ago

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(A couple of weeks ago, I was watching A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix, and then out of nowhere, decided to open Word and try to write something. This is what came tumbling out.)

It seems I’ve opened Word without thinking. A bad habit I really ought to rectify. And now, here I sit at my desk, clad in lounge pants and a green-and-black bathrobe, listening to three very silly men play Christmas songs on kazoos and slide whistles, desperately stalling while I try to think of something halfway interesting to write about.

Hmm��

I suppose I could say I’m feeling a little more verbose than usual. It’s probably because I’ve begun watching A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix, an adaptation of a novel series that, now that my memory has been jogged, was notably verbose in its own right. It’s odd; many words and phrases have entered my personal lexicon over the years, no different than anyone else, obviously, but I can’t help but notice that I use many more multisyllabic words than I did when I was in grade school. From watching cartoons in my youth, I was always under the impression that those who use multisyllabic words on a regular basis did so in a misguided attempt to seem smarter. Certainly, I enjoy appearing smart to those around me, but strangely, though I have found myself using bigger words, it’s not out of any conscious effort to seem intelligent, but merely because they are the first words that pop into my head when I’m searching for a proper fit. Though, admittedly, it does sometimes take me a few seconds to pull those words from the confines of my mind; that’s the annoying thing about gaining more multisyllabic words in one’s repertoire, they often replace the smaller, simpler words that could easily convey the same meaning.

Perhaps this is why it has been said that my generation has a penchant for “Buffy-speak,” if I may co-opt a term from TV Tropes. Oftentimes I cannot find the right word, at least not in the few seconds before searching for words in one’s head becomes immensely awkward, and so I resort to something not unlike an adjective, but lacking any real grammatical correct-ness, usually involving liberal use of the word “thing.” A “weird, word-y thing,” if I were to concoct an example. Imagine the looks on all my grade school writing teachers’ faces if I were to show them that bizarre salad of a phrase and mention my prospective holding of Master’s degree. Even as recent as fifteen years ago, such a thing would be unheard of.

Speaking of grade school writing, have I ever mentioned my seething hatred of the word “elaborate?” It comes up in conversation more often than one would expect; I’m fairly certain I have told all of my friends of this distaste at least once. In my youth, I was a firm believer of quality over quantity. I did not think that it was necessary to restate talking points over and over as though to fill a checklist when one or two sentences would suffice just fine. My teachers did not see it that way, however. With every writing assignment I turned in, it was the same tired spiel: “Dan, you need to elaaaaaborate.” “I need you to elaaaaaaborate.” “You haven’t conveyed your point, you need to elaaaaaaborate.” I’m not writing it that way for the sake of sounding condescending, they really said it like that every time. The way I saw it, and I still maintain this belief at least partially, is that while it is a writer’s job to write a sentence, it is also the reader’s job to infer meaning. Not symbolism, mind you. God no, that’s whole different can of worms. But rather, if I believe I have said all that needs to be said, then it ceases being my job to tell a story. It is then the reader’s job to build a picture of that story in their own minds. The irony of that belief is not lost on me, by the way, given my earlier tirade on multisyllabic words, but using flowery language is fine, provided the sentence that holds it is quick and to the point (unless it’s being purposely extended for the sake of being funny, such as in A Series of Unfortunate Events, if I may bring this stream of thought full circle).

It seems that this has turned into a brief thought piece on the nature of words and sentence length. How strange. And here I was, opening Word without an actual idea, feeling as though I should write something. So I wrote something about writing something.

#DT's Writing Thing #Writing

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junker-town · 8 years ago

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Emoji tournamant: Which one do you think is the best?

I speak only facts, so please don’t disagree.

I used to think emojis were dumb. They were nothing more than an ancillary keyboard I accidentally click on with my fat thumbs. But I’ve come around because emojis are a more modern form of communications that supercede the outdated “:).” They’re also all the rage with the kids these days. Exhibit A:

me : hey student athlete : me : how did you say that out loud

— eliza (@eggliza) March 11, 2017

The NBA have turned emoji communication into a minor cottage industry around important transactions.

There was Paul Pierce not understanding how they really work and tweeting a screenshot of one.

http://pic.twitter.com/SIyHJjDScR

— Paul Pierce (@paulpierce34) July 8, 2015

And recently, Isaiah Thomas got the internet in a tizzy with this tweet right before the trade deadline.

— Isaiah Thomas (@Isaiah_Thomas) February 21, 2017

NFL players get in on the fun too like whatever the hell Martellus Bennett was doing here.

Here's what my mind really looks like... ☺️ ⛹ ‍ ‍ ✊ ✊ ❄️☀️☃️ ‍♂️ ‍ ‍

— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) February 17, 2017

And we asked former college football recruits what their favorite emojis were a couple years ago.

Now we’re taking things to the next level. I’ve grouped 32 emojis by categories (so this isn’t seeded). But this is a battle for virtual emotion conveying supremacy, so let’s play this thing out.

First round

Editor's note: Winners in bold.

Thinking face vs. Eyes

This, essentially, is like picking between my own children. The thinking face and the eyes are both the go-to for instant reaction.

https://t.co/D6h38aLWf9

— Richard Johnson (@RJ_Writes) March 13, 2017

https://t.co/bTNXK3Leri

— Richard Johnson (@RJ_Writes) March 14, 2017

I’ll take the thinking face though because it can be used in a wider array of situations. We’ll get to those later.

Guy yelling vs. Upside down face

Gotta take the guy yelling here. Much more demonstrative. I’ve never understood the upside down face anyway. I mean, it’s just an upside down smiley face.

Pizza vs. Tacos

Hard tacos are bad.

Coffee vs. Beer

Stick with me here. We are all in agreement that beer is very good, but how many nights which end with beer turn into mornings that have multiple cups of coffee? In a basketball sense, beer is exciting and fun, but coffee is consistent. Coffee is the steadfast defensive stalwart against a hangover’s offensive onslaught.

Standard crying face vs. Red mad face

Crying face is too versatile to overlook here. You can cry tears of joy, sadness or laughter with this one (although there’s a crying laughter emoji as well). The tears streaming down the cheek are just too good to pass up.

Sleeping vs. Crying laughing

For the reasons stated above, it’s gotta be the sleeping face. You can also spin sleep and boredom and exhaustion outta that.

Hearts in the eyes vs. Kissing with heart

The love emojis break down in two different categories: overt, and subtle for your flirting purposes. These first two are fairly overt displays of affection. Judging them on those merits, I’ll give the nod to hearts in the eyes.

Kissing face vs. Eggplant.

So you’re trying to flirt with a significant other but you’re not trying to come on too strong but you want them to know you’re feeling them a little bit. That’s your kissy face without the heart. I imagine it’s the virtual kiss on the cheek.

The eggplant has, uhh, a much different flirting purpose that you should ask a teenager about if you’re over 30 years old.*

*Please don’t actually ask a teenager about double entendres in emojis because then we wind up with stuff like this on the evening news.

Alright who snitched http://pic.twitter.com/Y1h0tv8mrg

— B (@Bry_Nap) February 2, 2017

Thumbs up vs. Cool guy shades

Cool guy shades look cool, but beyond that, what’s the point?

Money mouth vs. Praying(?) hands

As a praying man, I would have taken the praying hands, but here’s the thing: there’s some ambiguity about whether they’re in fact praying hands. It used to have the little yellow aura behind it to make you think it was praying hands, but the official emoji name is actually “hands pressed together.” For that, I’m taking the money mouth, because I don’t have to guess there.

Clapping hands vs. Praising hands

You think the clapping hands are for applause but I submit to you that despite what the haters say it’s actually the most effective form of punctuation known to man.

Listen to me right now: In the future whoever uses the most clap emojis will get to determine all laws as well as the distribution of

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) March 28, 2016

Fire vs. 100

This was another tough matchup, but “keeping it 100” has fallen a bit out of our vernacular so the general utility of the emoji has fallen a bit.

Death vs. Crossed arms lady

In the end, death always wins.

Trash vs. Poop emoji

I need to speak on this: the poop emoji is weird and gross. Why would I want to send virtual fecal matter to someone else? It belongs permanently in the trash, and luckily we’ve got a trash can right here.

Nails vs. Incredulous woman

“Incredulous woman” is simply my interpretation of the emoji. The official distinction here is “information desk woman,” but that doesn’t jive with me. I have used that emoji on many an occasion after dropping some sarcasm, shade or pettiness. I love the emoji, but stacked up against nail painting I’d have to just say (insert incredulous woman emoji).

Middle finger vs. Frog emoji

There are two times you’ll see the frog face in a tweet and one of them is with the cup of coffee to signal when someone is trying to mind their own business (invoking the kermit meme). The frog face is trash and can’t stand on its own also folks not hip to the meme have questions.

I’d like to give the frog emoji the middle finger.

Sweet 16

Thinking face vs. Guy yelling

I didn’t have to think too hard about this one.

Pizza vs. Coffee

Coffee is best confined to breakfast (miss me with the iced coffee you people drink at like 2 p.m. on a July Tuesday.) Pizza, on the other hand, can be eaten at any time of the day and therefore emojid at any hour of the day.

Sleeping vs. Standard crying face

I’m crying when I think about the lack of sleep I’ve had lately, but let’s roll with the emoji signifying the best part of the day to win here.

Hearts in the eyes vs. Kissing face

If you love ‘em, tell ‘em how you really feel. None of that subtle crap.

Money mouth vs. Thumbs up

Fire vs. Clapping hands

You thought clapping was just punctuation? Nah. It doubles as this awesome soccer celebration by Iceland fans made popular the European championship last summer.

But even Iceland’s run ended when it met an opponent which they were simply no match for.

Trash vs. Death

Ok, maybe death doesn’t always win.

Nails vs. Middle finger

We underrate the nails emoji too much. For folks who do get their nails done, it serves the lovely purpose of communicating when the cuticles are looking fresh. But when you dunk on someone online, throwing the nails at the end looks particularly savage as well.

The next time someone asks you to go out to that dinner place you don’t like? Hit em with this.

Elite Eight

Thinking face vs. Pizza

You can only go so far with pizza, despite its delicious nature. There’s a nuance to the emotion conveyed with the thinking face. You can express confusion, shock, or buy yourself more time in a discussion. Pizza is great, but I need versatility in emotion that thinking face affords me.

Hearts in the eyes vs. Sleep

Love conquers all — even sleep.

Money mouth vs. Fire

Trash vs. Nails

It’s really petty vs. petty here, and the trash emoji is really the king off pettiness on our phones. It’s a very simple message with a very direct point. The word trash has wormed its way into the collective lexicon lately and I think that’s good. That movie you like, or that dinner or whatever it is you’re bragging about is probably trash. We’ve got a simple way of conveying the message here.

Final Four

Thinking face vs. Hearts in the eyes

Some say getting to the Final Four is enough of a prize. I love you, hearts in the eyes, but even you don’t have the sentimental value that thinking face does.

Trash vs. Money mouth

The road ends here, money mouth. Just sit back and reflect on a run to the emoji Final Four.

The emoji championship game.

Thinking face vs. Trash

Here’s how we got here.

And to the victor go the spoils. You can practically hear One Shining Moment playing in the background.

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