language itself

[revolutionR]

In the beginning
I dove into language
to see all its diversity
I wanted to find words
in the most unusual places
and in this way not necessary
to make sense, in the sense
that we assume what is sense
but as should be becoming
more and more obvious
that I have to say more
more then once
is that common sense
is not in abundant quantity
let alone quality
in fact we seem to be in scarce
supply of it

yet we live in a world
filled with secrets, who is that hides
what we don't know from us
we have had the language pulled over our eyes
so that you can read all the books, the good books
and the bad books, and still not see the writing
on the wall, need I say more twice

[dune]

True. Much of "sense" has been hammered into us, claiming to be "common." Even though it's not.

"Stop Making Sense"-- David Byrne

[sasha]

George Carlin did a bit on euphemism, the bloating of language, and the tendency to obscure truth under mountains of words. "Shell shock" came out of WW1 - two syllables that describe what happens when the stress of war overwhelms an individual. WW2 changed that to "combat fatigue" - same syndrome, twice the syllables. From Vietnam and later Iraq we got "post-traumatic stress disorder" - eight syllables of jargon that nicely shield us from the reality of the condition.