Are we, as a society or set of societies too quick to categorise?

I think we have built upon the Victorian-era’s predilection for classification for understanding. You’ll notice, no doubt, that I categorised the idea of classification as Victorian. Perhaps this is a helpful metaphorical conduit for expressing a large number of semantic nuances–a sort of communicative shorthand. When I mention ‘Victorian’, loads of images appear in my mind: women in petticoats and parasols, men with mustaches, steam engines, industrial buildings, red-brick, tea, lack of smiles… and a corresponding set of ideas begins to emerge rather like a tag-cloud which gets more intricate the longer you focus on a single tag.

But, what if this becomes a hindrance to meaning. I am not alone in experiencing the frustration involved when someone tries to categorise you. My wife, a veterinary surgeon, was recently introducing herself to a middle-aged woman who had asked us how long we’d lived in our town.

“Oh, I recently got a job in the vet’s practice,” says my wife (who’s blessed with ageless looks which often leave people stunned to learn her real age)

“Really! Do you need some sort of qualification to do that?”

Both my wife and I had to bite back any reproach involved in explaining that it does indeed take quite a bit of training and qualification before being allowed to take a job as a practicing veterinary surgeon, the last of which being five-years’ worth of 40+-hour weeks of a veterinary degree and harrowing RCVS examinations.

I just read an ingenious article over at Copyblogger about mixed messages and Yogi Berra- more famous for befuddled witicisms than for being one of baseball’s all-time greats.

Dean Riack transformed some of Yogi’s most famous statements into aphorisms and translated the meanings for us. A perfect example:

Yogi: “Ninety percent of the game is half mental.”

Translation: Think before you act…

I love this kind of article: a mixture of wit and helpful advice easily read and well-formed.

Thanks Dean!

When social networking is the topic, I imagine most people think of Facebook, Myspace or LinkedIn—sites fundamentally  derived from self promotion and entertainment. Despite the high language used to discuss social networking and Web 2.0, most of my time spent on them is all about having fun or trying to look better to others (which is what LinkedIn is primarily for). But what about the idea that the world is now connected? Why do I spend most of my time online ‘socialising’ with people I already know, or participating in interests in which I’m already interested?

After all, the idea of a network (on online community) is to create and maintain connections between people and groups. It is only a matter of time before connections are made which open eyes.

Bloggers in Burma have been using the web to broadcast their message not to let the world close its eyes to the community disaster there. YouTube has been mentioned to contain many thousands of clips from soldiers in or from Iraq. This is a serious source of information, a broadcast network between communities. And it seems that this call for help could be so easily ignored if it weren’t for the persistence of the messages: ignorance as a refuge is shrinking daily.

But where’s the 2.0 in this Web? Where is the sharing and the interaction from these blogs and discussions? Have a look at Kiva.org, the most inspiring website I have seen in months.

I have subscribed to Tim Ferriss’ blog for a few weeks, and have found its content enlightening and interesting. Having done a degree in applied linguistics, I found the his item about learning a language in an hour interesting, if slightly mis-named.

Tim reckons that you can work out how to learn a language in about an hour, but not actually become fluent in it in that time. He lays out a plan for analysing and comparing differences between languages we might already know with a target language, and using that information to make decisions about how to learn.

As part of my studies at Kings, we looked at learning styles and communicative competencies. (Check out George Yule for more on linguistics). I would have thought that the idea that you can focus on a particular tactic for learning a language lies partly with the language itself (and for that, Tim’s blog entry seems completely apt), but also on identifying one’s own learning styles and techniques. Then, a language could be tackled in a way which makes use of one’s particular strengths while focusing on the areas which would most help.

I highly recommend Tim’s blog, and think it’s well worth a few hours reading!