09-30-2019, 08:52 AM
A few random thoughts...
The other colloquialism is avoiding (evading?) the issue by using second person:
"You can say whatever you want."
This often draws suppressive fire in poetry, not so much for informality as the way it presumes about someone else's state of mind, I guess. The presumption is stronger in other uses
"You see whatever you want in clouds and abstract art."
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On the original question, who owns the language - maybe it owns itself, and we're just guests using the facilities it provides until we transgress so far as to be incomprehensible.
I'm fascinated by nonsense, and the way it's circumscribed. For example, the difference between "swizzle" and "dizzle." The first is somebody's long-accepted alliteration with "stick" and has essentially no other use - but it's a proper word. The other falls instantly through the seive of all the possible meanings any of us knows (hanging up briefly, for some, on "deazle," the opposite of "widdershins" or a misspelling of "diesel") and out the bottom as nonsense.
Use of "they" falls through the "proper" filter in "if anyone objects, we'll know who they are" and is caught in "informal," but understood. A language consists of all those varied filters and properties; it owns itself. We write a poem in a language, and (unless it's a nonsense poem, but even then) it either stays within the envelope or has a few pseudopods that burst through but remain connected.
Otherwise the poem is meaningless. And what does that mean, anyway?
The other colloquialism is avoiding (evading?) the issue by using second person:
"You can say whatever you want."
This often draws suppressive fire in poetry, not so much for informality as the way it presumes about someone else's state of mind, I guess. The presumption is stronger in other uses
"You see whatever you want in clouds and abstract art."
--------------------
On the original question, who owns the language - maybe it owns itself, and we're just guests using the facilities it provides until we transgress so far as to be incomprehensible.
I'm fascinated by nonsense, and the way it's circumscribed. For example, the difference between "swizzle" and "dizzle." The first is somebody's long-accepted alliteration with "stick" and has essentially no other use - but it's a proper word. The other falls instantly through the seive of all the possible meanings any of us knows (hanging up briefly, for some, on "deazle," the opposite of "widdershins" or a misspelling of "diesel") and out the bottom as nonsense.
Use of "they" falls through the "proper" filter in "if anyone objects, we'll know who they are" and is caught in "informal," but understood. A language consists of all those varied filters and properties; it owns itself. We write a poem in a language, and (unless it's a nonsense poem, but even then) it either stays within the envelope or has a few pseudopods that burst through but remain connected.
Otherwise the poem is meaningless. And what does that mean, anyway?
Non-practicing atheist