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Showing posts from August, 2012

Language and our capacity to communicate

So many articles of late lament the nature of public discourse. The dog whistles, the sound bites, the 'spin', the cliches. Kate Holden  yesterday and Barry Jones  today. The discussion of ideas, the debates on merit are lost to shrill positions which play to prejudices. The death of Robert Hughes yesterday sent me back to his tomes-magnificent books on art The Shock of the New, my inscribed copy of American Visions, his ode to fishing A Jerk on the End and his magnificent piece on Australian history, The Fatal Shore. Hughes in The Fatal Shore describes the delineation of language by land, landscape, rivers, ridges and other natural barriers. Tribes around Sydney Harbour spoke different languages, and they had no need to learn each others' tongues as their self sufficient lifestyle made them content where they were, in a land replete with food and the harbour filled with fish. We observe the world and make sense of it-interpret and reflect on the experience which is our