“We Create New Voices For Ourselves”

Ideologies of Language among Creators of Language “amz{-}le

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One of the most important contributions of Structuralism has been the idea that positive meaning comes from negative oppositions. ‘Blue’ means ‘blue’ not because there is some ultimate universal ideal of ‘blueness,’ but because it is not ‘green’ or ‘purple,’ or any other word or concept that could conceivably fill its place. The same thing can be said to occur in human relations – when people identify themselves as ‘male,’ ‘Jewish,’ or ‘American,’ they are at the same time defining themselves as not whatever other adjectives could fit in those places. The same can be said for ideologies. While ‘dog’ is defined by its implicit contrast with ‘cat’ and an infinite number of other similar and different nouns, an ideology can become formally defined in the minds of its adherents in response to explicit contact with or attack by a competing ideology. Such a defining attack occurred in April on the Conlang internet listserv. Conlang is an online community dedicated to the discussion of constructed languages (‘conlangs’ in colloquial in-group terminology). Founded in 1991, Conlang was flooded with heated arguments in support of and against various competing international auxiliary languages, such as Esperanto and Volapük, until a few years later when an additional listserv, Auxlang, was founded. Since then, Conlang has been dominated by discussions of art languages, while discussions of ‘auxlang’ politics and proselytizing have been confined to their own separate listserv. Today, the two listservs, in general, peacefully coexist, each with their own separate communities, although periodically Conlang members will go to Auxlang to ‘bait the auxlangers’ and Auxlang members will attempt to advertise their utopian international auxiliary languages on Conlang. One of these ‘auxlangers’ came to Conlang in January, 2003 announcing his conlang, which he promoted as the perfect international auxiliary language, seemingly not understanding that on the whole, the subscribers to Conlang were not interested. The reasons they weren’t interested, and the ideologies behind them, became explicit when he returned in April, 2003 and incited more than a hundred and fifty responses over the next two weeks to the following statement: It seems to me that most of the languages discussed in this mailing list are not languages at all, but names of languages that exist only in the imagination of the person who invented the names. I doubt a language can be used for simple everyday communication unless it has a vocabulary of at least 1000 words. Has anyone in this mailing list made a real conlang? Making a real language is a huge effort, almost like building a pyramid. Team work is a necessity... ...Perhaps the reason for the difference [in teamwork] is that the Linux programs are tools, while the languages discussed here are as useful as the pyramids. The main purpose of the pyramid is to say “My unique pyramid is sky high and made of white marble. I do not share it with anymore.” The responses took issue with the auxlanger’s use of the phrases “real conlang,” “real language,” and “purpose.” In their postings, the creators of art languages expressed both explicitly and implicitly their beliefs concerning Language in general, constructed languages in particular, and the use value of constructing them in the first place. Not many responses dealt with the nature of language in general, probably because of the ambiguity of the original statement, where the terms ‘language’ and ‘conlang’ were used interchangeably, without reference to the existence of the entire class of ‘natlangs’ or natural languages. Early on, a somewhat academic definition of language was offered: “a real language is simply a behavior pattern of humans that happens to have certain properties, including being a social phenomenon.” However, later on a dominant ideological metaphor developed in response to the auxlanger’s later comparison of language to an automobile. He seemed to have been determining the ‘reality’ of a language based on the size of its vocabulary, in response to which someone wrote:

...[C]lassifying conlangs by the size of their lexicon, is not only useless, but it’s also misleading! ...[V]ocabulary doesn’t make a language. A lexicon without a grammar is not a language. It doesn’t even have the potential to become a language... But a grammar without a vocabulary *is* a language, in the sense that it *has* the potential to become a language (when you have the engine, the wheels (including the steering wheel) and the frame, not much more is needed to have the car run). Another artlanger added that language could be seen as “a train, with the engine as the grammatical structure and the cars behind as the vocabulary. It can’t go anywhere without the grammar, and without the vocabulary, it’s not very useful.” ‘Definitions’ of this metaphorical type fared better than concrete dictionary definitions of language. The dictionary definitions supplied by the auxlanger, among others, were rejected, sometimes vehemently. For instance, one artlanger stated: “Webster’s isn’t an authority. *We*, the speakers of English, are the authority on what words mean, not one dictionary.” The ideology that all the authority that defines a language, how it works, and what its individual words mean comes exclusively from its speakers, and not from any ‘official’ dictionary or language maintenance board fits in with an outlook in which language can be consciously created and shaped by human beings. To the layman, dictionaries contain the ‘true’ meaning of words. To the artlanger, a language is the creation of its speakers, and therefore they have the final – and only – say as to what its words mean. The same respondent who said that a ‘real language is simply a behavior pattern’ also introduced a definitive expression of what seems to be the dominant ideology of conlanging: We are not creating real languages, we are creating constructed languages; much like painters paint pictures of grapes rather than pulling grapes out of thin air. Auxlangers see language as a tool. Artlangers see language as an artwork. In her article “Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG” published online, University of Rochester professor Sarah Higley paraphrases an artlanger who claims “conlanging... may be as common and as humanly creative as any kind of model-making, i.e., dollhouses, model trains, role-playing, or even the constructed cultures with city plans and maps in fantasy novels...” This is an argument of naturalization: in response to their critics, those who dabble in creating languages describe their hobby as an expression of a natural human desire and skill at creation. Throughout their postings to the listserv, they compare the construction of artificial languages to painting, music, and other forms of art, but especially to poetry. There is a well-known saying on Conlang whose origins have been lost in internet evolution that says conlanging is “the most primal form of poetry – for with it we create new voices for ourselves.” As one artlanger said, “Language is philosophy, language is culture, language is all the way human beings think. Can you think without a language?” In creating new languages, with sounds, structures, and ways of categorizing the world that are only based on the creator’s aesthetic and linguistic tastes, artlangers feel that they are opening up entirely new ways of looking at the world and expressing themselves within it. As one person posted: Creating languages is also learning to think for a second time. It is about meaning, about redundancy, about hidden distinctions that we would never discover by just using our existent languages which we are perfectly used to. Conlanging opens the mind and it IS definitely a way of expression. Yes, it is an art which gladly delivers a personal experience that is known and loved by every artist I know: the exceedingly great pleasure of the human mind which is able to express itself thoroughly, easily and deeply. The artlangers on Conlang validate their hobby by reading it into the greater ideology of Art in general. If “a symphony that lasts less than half an hour and doesn’t use a full orchestra is still a symphony,” then a constructed language with a small extant vocabulary and unfinished grammatical rules is still a conlang. And they routinely use art terminology in how they speak about conlanging. For example, in response to the auxlanger’s promotion of group projects, one artlanger wrote: “All the great conlang masterpieces have been solo performances.” Another wrote, “I admire [conlangs] as linguistic masterpieces rather than as power tools... The only reason [his main conlang] exists is because I have a con[structed-]world which needs its own unique language to be complete. And why the conworld? I don’t know. That’s like asking Monet, why paint?” But if conlanging is being read into the greater ideology of Art in our society, it also must deal with the challenges that art faces. One of the biggest of those challenges is the question of use. What use is poetry, drama, literature, painting, and music? Back in the domain of conlanging as ‘the most primal form of poetry,’ one artlanger said that when it comes to art, “art and personal expression are lofty enough aims. After all, isn’t that what language is: personal expression?” The creation of language is being seen as not just another form of art, but as the ultimate form of art. And as opposed to the auxlanger, who has “always believed that science and technology are more important than art,” the ideology of language and language-as-art current among the participants in the Conlang listserv says that art is at least as important – and in most people’s expressions, more important – than science. An

artlanger who works as a researcher of fluid mechanics states explicitly that “without art, there would be no science! All great scientists were not for nothing great artists too.” However, he doesn’t completely subsume Science to Art; he sees Science, Art, and Technology as “three hooks of a triangle, or three points of a circle, and each needs the other two to exist.” He continues: Art cannot exist without Technology, even technology as simple as using your hand and your brains, because Art is about creating... and you cannot create without tools. Science cannot exist without Art, because an artistic mind is needed to provide for new hypotheses, new and provocative ideas that Science needs... And finally, Technology cannot exist without Science, because in order to make effective tools, you eventually need to understand how things work. Here are two more examples of artlangers expressing the ‘art is an essential part of human life’ ideology: • There is no substitute for creativity. • The [scientist who hasn’t forgotten art] is the one who is not forgotten and whose discoveries and publications are useful for others. However, many of the conlangers also expressed a separate justification for their activity, and for art in general. According to Dean Easton’s “Conlang FAQ” website, “...as with playing music, the goal of conlanging is ultimately delight.” Fun, enjoyment, and entertainment are mentioned multiple times by a variety of posters to the listserv as valid reasons and ‘uses’ they get out of indulging in conlanging and other forms of art. One artlanger says: “What’s the use of art, after all? Nothing at all, apart from the fact that it gives meaning to our miserable, empty lives, but that is of course, mere self-suggestion.” This view of art goes back to the ‘patron saint’ of artlanging: J.R.R. Tolkien. In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien claims that Escape is one of the main functions of Fantasy, which he whole-heartedly supports: Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it... [Critics who condemn ‘Escapism’] are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. Tolkien continued the circle of ideological discourse from Conlanging, through Art, all the way to Religion, one of the most powerful ideological forces in human life. He saw the creation of language as part of the “scheme of natural human mythopoeia” – the human faculty for creating not only ‘trivial’ artworks, but for giving meaning to life and the universe we live in. Although Tolkien himself was a Catholic, his ideology of the holiness of SubCreation has been adapted and adopted by artlangers of other faiths, including Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Orthodox Judaism. In the words of Boudewijn Rempt’s “Apologia pro Imaginatione,” ...[I]n creating worlds, cultures and languages, in writing computer programs, in drawing sketches, sculpting and writing stories and bits of poetry, in constructing music and in preparing those works for reception, I am following my nature, doing what God intended me to do... I am created in the image of God the creator... [and b]eing created in that image, means that I must create, too – even if it is, as Tolkien said, sub-creation... The point – as Tolkien understood very well – is that subcreation can only be done in the image of God (whether one acknowledges that or not...)... and all art is a form of sub-creation... Bibliography “Constructed Languages List Archives.” (1998-2003). [email protected] Easton, Dean. “Conlang FAQ.” (2003). Higley, Sarah L. “Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG: Inventing Languages on the Internet.” M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). Rempt, Boudewijn. “Apologia pro Imaginatione.” (1999).