Subject: (urth) Loyal to the Group of Seventeen

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 15:31:37 +0000

Matthew asks:

> > >Has anyone mentioned this is a response/riposte to Orwell 
> and Nuspeak?

and Hartshorn replies:

> It is obvious that it is derived from 1984 and Nuspeak.   The 
> idea that the Ascian's war may be derived from the eternal war
> between Oceana/Eastasia/Eurasia is a good one.

Ummm ... well, maybe a little, but the speech patterns of the 
Ascians are _not_ derived from Newspeak. They are a clear and
luminous reference to the habit that was for many years common 
in mainland China and among certain groups of "liberal" 
"intellectuals" in the US, of constantly quoting from the sayings
of Mao Zedong -- or Mao Tse-Tung, as it was then spelled -- and
treating such quotes as the final authority, in much the way some
fundamentalist Christians treat quotes from Scripture.

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From: bobking <bobking at gate.net>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 20:19:47 +0000

I see a connection with Newspeak here, but more in the sense that Wolfe is rejecting Orwell's pessimism (if I'm interpreting him correctly) about the human mind's ability to overcome totalitarianism.

In _1984_ Newspeak and the rest of Oceania's thought control obliterate all reality and history except for what the Party wants to present. The muddled and imprecise expression fostered by Newspeak ma
In TBOTNS, it seems that the Ascians have tried to do the same thing to an even greater extreme. Not only are only a certain selection of words allowed, as in Newspeak, but Ascians can only speak (and
But for Wolfe, humanity is able to overcome these hobbles. Even using only the approved phrases, Loyal to the Group of 17 can tell the story he wants to tell and try to win the contest. Totalitarianis
I much prefer Wolfe's more optimistic vision to the one Orwell proposed (although Orwell's idea seemingly had a lot going for it in the 1940s). And I think history has proven Wolfe right -- the commun
-- Bob

On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 08:31:37 -0700 Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com> wrote:

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 20:47:12 +0000

Bob King wrote...

H'mmm. Bob, your long one-line paragraphs are getting cut off. Perhaps you
can use the occasional carriage-return/line-feed?

> I see a connection with Newspeak here, but more in the sense 
> that Wolfe is rejecting Orwell's pessimism (if I'm 
> interpreting him correctly) about the human mind's ability to 
> overcome totalitarianism.

Well, yeah, I agree with that, at least; Orwell's totalitarian
state was involved in a pragmatic application of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis that suggests that our perceptions of reality are 
defined and delimited by our language; the Group of Seventeen
seem to be doing much the same thing. Nonetheless, I hold and 
insist that the more direct application of "Correct Thought" is
to the Mao-quoting habits of Chinese Communists, especially in
the '60s and '70s.

I wonder also if the choice of the number seventeen is 
significant -- perhaps a sort of sideways reference to another 
stfnal instantiation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I refer, of
course to Samuel R. Delany's novel in which a language with no
words for "I" and "You" plays a major role -- Babel-17.

You are trapped in that bright moment when you learned your doom

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 21:55:50 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>
> words for "I" and "You" plays a major role -- Babel-17.

Interesting thought.   The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has a long pedigree in SF
(cf Vance THE LANGUAGES OF PAO)  but is almost certinly untrue.

In fact we now know that children bought up in a civilisation that spoke
only in these tags would spontaneously Creolise the language, generating a
real language with a built in grammar from it.

At what time did Chomskyan ideas about language - intrinsic, built-in
metagrammar - become standard?    Did Wolfe know?

    hartshorn

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From: bobking <bobking at gate.net>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 20:18:33 +0000

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 21:17:10 +0000

Hartshorn writes...

> Interesting thought.   The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has a long 
> pedigree in SF (cf Vance THE LANGUAGES OF PAO) but is almost
> certinly untrue.

I think "too strong" is probably more accurate than "untrue." Language,
along with other mental structures, does pretty clearly _guide_ the 
way we think about things. It doesn't have the property of absolute 
constraint/restraing that Sapir-Whorf suggests.

One of the reasons Sapir-Whorf (whether or not named as such) has
so strong a pedigree in SF is doubtless its strongest instantiation,
the study of General Semantics, founded by Count Alfred Korzybski, 
which essentially claims that most if not all "mental" problems stem 
from the use of "language" that does not correspond to "reality." (I 
place those words in quotes because in g-s they have special technical
meanings.) General semantics has (to a greater or lesser extent) 
influenced a large number of SF writers directly, including van Vogt, 
Heinlein, and Delany; it seems likely enough that it also influences
others indirectly through these.

> In fact we now know that children bought up in a civilisation 
> that spoke only in these tags would spontaneously Creolise the
> language, generating a real language with a built in grammar from
> it.

H'mmm. I think to say "we know" is, again, a bit too strong: "we 
have strong reason to believe," yes. Some popularizers (Pinker comes 
readily to mind) have a tendency to state these things as firm and
established fact, when we're dealing in an area where experimentation
is nearly impossible and field data is always already tainted by
interaction with other cultures.

> metagrammar - become standard?    Did Wolfe know?

I don't know if they are "standard," but they are certainly influential
and taught in most linguistics curricula. I think the whole "deep
grammar" idea is still somewhat controversial, despite the claims of,
once again, Pinker that the whole thing is settled.

Burro: An ass. Burrow: A hole in the ground. Be sure you know the
difference.

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From: tom <tom at bitterman.net>
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 13:24:21 +0000

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes writes:

> way we think about things.

Wolfe alludes to this favorably (in Plan[e]t Engineering, I think)
where he mentions that we tend to think of politics and economics
as separate things because we have no word that combines the two.

Tom

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From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 22:45:47 +0000

--- bobking at gate.net wrote:
> I see a connection with Newspeak here, but more in the sense that Wolfe
> is rejecting Orwell's pessimism (if I'm interpreting him correctly)
> about the human mind's ability to overcome totalitarianism.
> 
> In _1984_ Newspeak and the rest of Oceania's thought control obliterate
> all reality and history except for what the Party wants to present. The
> muddled and imprecise expression fostered by Newspeak ma
> 
> In TBOTNS, it seems that the Ascians have tried to do the same thing to
> an even greater extreme. Not only are only a certain selection of words
> allowed, as in Newspeak, but Ascians can only speak (and
> 
> But for Wolfe, humanity is able to overcome these hobbles. Even using
> only the approved phrases, Loyal to the Group of 17 can tell the story
> he wants to tell and try to win the contest. Totalitarianis
> 
> I much prefer Wolfe's more optimistic vision to the one Orwell proposed
> (although Orwell's idea seemingly had a lot going for it in the 1940s).
> And I think history has proven Wolfe right -- the commun
> 
> -- Bob
...

You may be right about Wolfe's intentions, but on the other hand,
for all we know LttGo17 might have met a fate like Winston Smith's
had he not been lucky enough to get captured.

Jerry Friedman

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