{"id":94,"date":"2008-04-05T12:56:25","date_gmt":"2008-04-05T11:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/archives\/conversational-tagging-rough-draft\/"},"modified":"2022-12-06T16:00:28","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T16:00:28","slug":"conversational-tagging-rough-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/2008\/04\/conversational-tagging-rough-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversational tagging–rough draft"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Are we, as a society or set of societies too quick to categorise?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Really! Do you need some sort of qualification to do that?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the woman was trying to do, of course, was to find out whether Wendy works there as a nurse or sweeping floors and cleaning kennels. Her surprise proved this when Wendy laughingly explained that she’s a vet and therefore has several necessary qualifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What this illustrates is a time when the categories we use as a conceptual structure don’t fit. The woman’s whole perception of my wife came to a crashing, embarrassing end when she was forced to re-render her conceptual structure. Now, I believe that we, as humans, require certain conceptual and metaphorical constructs in order to turn our perceptions into understandings. They, in essence, allow us to contain a concept in order to analyse it and let our abstract processes work. They give non-physical concepts substance so we can get our physical brains around them. (For more, I highly recommend Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors we Live By).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I am beginning to wonder is whether there is a glitch in the natural necessity for these constructs. What happens if a society becomes transfixed with its own metaphors? Or, maybe it’s just that the shorthand is used too freely? What does it mean to be ‘post-modern’, ‘ecological’, ‘ethical’, or any number of tags we use to convey huge propositions of meaning? I propose that conceptual tagging, and the short-hand language of metaphor is fast becoming the newest form of cliche. We are learning, culturally, to package more meaning than we understand ourselves into ever-smaller packages. Communication is beginning to break down at some levels due to ambiguity and a lack of understanding so that the entire semantic package is not necessarily being transmitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I am having a conversation about industriousness, working hard, or innovation, I use the idea of ‘Victorian’ in a very different way from its use in a dialogue about expressive freedom, colonialism or interior design. So, to a certain extent, the context of the conversation is important. But what is actually happening when someone uses ‘toxins’, ‘carbs’, and ‘omega-3’ as tags for ‘unhealthy’, ‘bad for you’, and ‘beneficial’ respectively? I’d love to understand this phenomenon of communication more fully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please note: I am not attacking culture, education or the general state of the world, but trying to explore the concepts of understanding and communication. If you have ideas, please let me know them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[767,777,834],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-linguistics","tag-literature","tag-metaphor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13023,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/13023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}