5. Communicating across the canyons

I saw the comment. Erm….? by jazz606

I should say that it is quite appropriate. For a variety of reasons. One, too many exotic ideas were inserted in my last post. Second, the total incomprehensibility of the theme.

There have been others with more profundity and talent who have failed in the same endeavourer. Here I remember Robert Clive, who literally single-handedly created the English Empire, in the Indian peninsular region. Young, school dropout, formally uneducated Clive.

It is said that he did not learn the local vernaculars even though he did administer the region for quite some time. He tried to explain the feudal language social system to the people in England. Reading his speech in the British parliament, I can understand what he tried to explain. Yet, there was no tool in English by which he could do it. The academic world over there literally sneered and jeered at him. He with no formal education, but with a scholarship, talent, capacity and experience, far beyond anything any academician could even dream of, had no academic platform to base his contentions on.

However, there have been many others who did sense something quite disquieting, on close proximity, in the feudal language social systems. However, none seems to have understood or at least tried to understand the disquiet.

Some more than thirty years back, I did read a book titled, The Shadow of the moon by M.M Kaye. The protagonist was an English girl who had been born in the Indian peninsular region. During her childhood she had learnt the local vernacular Hindi. There had been Hindi speaking servants in the household. Later she had gone back to England. However, in her late adolescent days, she had to return to the same Indian peninsular area. The book mentions the strange feeling of being overwhelmed when in the Indian peninsula. Especially when she spoke in Hindi. It was an emotion mentioned, with no adequate explanation given. As if the place had some native eeriness in it.

Another author who does seem to have sensed this is Somerset Maugham. His short story The Pool does really connect to this theme, even though there is no mention of Maugham really grasping the negative content in the other side, other than the repulsion that it springs.

The geographical setting is South Pacific. In another short story of his, I remember a situation of an English female who spoke a feudal language perfectly, seen totally shackled in some strange kind of encasement by a native feudal language speaker. Though it is alluded to as an unsettling romance, the truth of the matter was in the shackling hold that the other man was having over the female when the spoken language was the feudal language.

Some thirty years back I did read another book by name,Gillian, by Frank Yerby. I do not really remember the theme. However, Gillian seems to exhibit a dual personality. The personality shift is triggered whenever she is in the companionship of her black servant woman, who had looked after her in her infancy. Through her, Gillian had learnt somenative African language. This servant used to speak to Gillian only in her native language.

No one could really understand what was being said. However, the personality change that this is spurred is seen. At the time when I read the book, I was quite intrigued by the issue of how a native English writer could understand this theme. However, a few years back, I read that Frank Yerby was actually an African-American. This information did serve to fill the blanks.

Communicating across the canyons

In this chapter, I am aiming to deal with only one single idea.

Let us take the human arrangement again. See the image again. Of human beings arranged in one specific hierarchical pattern in the feudal language.

The arrangement of human beings as seen above is not connected to any formal regimentation as in a military, or by any statutory social apparatus, as one say is the feudalism in England. The arrangement is purely arranged by multi-form words and usages. Each individual in this pattern would be in different locations in different link patterns. That is, when different persons speak, they can arrange the same person in a different pattern, if they want. However, in each pattern this person has a definite location.

I am now speaking of two different persons in two different link patterns speaking to each other.

The minimum visualization of this idea might be like this in English

And in feudal languages, human beings are arranged in a hierarchy. Each of the individual dot (the person) has a particular level in his own link pattern. He has persons above him and persons below him. In the image below, each dot is a person.

So the communication is like this:

Again this can be elaborated as the link between two different individuals in two different link patterns.

And the picture can be enlarged to this.

However, again there are more complications.

The first issue is that that even each link pattern would have different heights in the language codes.

For example, a senior government employee and a carpenter in the nation of India. Each of them is identified to be in different link patterns. Each of the link patterns is given different elevations in the language. In traditional social codes, the government officials are in the heights. Only during the brief period of English rule, did the government babus come down slightly and the others go up.

Now look at this communication link:

This is one issue.

The second one is also quite a powerful one. That each of the dots (the persons) has three or more personality level forms. The highest, the medium and the lowest. See this image:

Please note that each side is actually one single person. Yet, he has three mental levels.

Now the communication between two individuals in this minute picture is can be one of the varying links I have given below:

Bear in mind that even though I have used only three colours, each of the different links really should be shown in different colours. And the real varying levels in feudal languages not really three, but more. And much more complicated.

Now what have I proposed?

A simple communication link in English which can be shown by this image

has a complicated mix of these three images: 1. Links between varying human levels. {Each dot is a person}

2. Link between varying link patterns of varying levels: {Each dot is a person}.

3. Each individual dot (person) itself being in varying internal levels and the communication link being made complicated by this factor. {Each side is one individual}

The communication is dangerously much more complicated than anything a native-English man can visualise. However, in reality communication is not so difficult. It is like studying division in arithmetic. Ex:

220 ÷ 5 = 44

When one studies in the lower classes, there are elaborate steps to go through. However, when gets to learn the route, the division is done in a more or less automated manner. Likewise, when one learns to speak in feudal languages, the assigning of varying levels, snubbing, pejoratives, ennobling usages &c. comes naturally, and spontaneously.

The mental process moves fast on the correct route. Many things like need to be obliged, obsequious, be honest, cheat, snigger, sneer, snub, taunt, by-pass professional etiquettes, pay homage, take bribes etc. are encoded in this communication route. Everyone in a feudal language social environment is affected. By being ennobled and obliged to, or by being snubbed, degraded, insulted, and offended, or by being excluded from certain positions, locations and routes. Or hurt by the carnivorous nature of the certain selected words. Apartheid is naturally encoded and as well as repulsiveness. Yet, no one mentions these things in so many words. And that is the beauty of the codes.

I need to stop. There is much more to mention.