Tag Archives: language

Charitable Interpretation

Harmonious interaction between bloggers, particularly Christian bloggers, is very important to me. Blogs have tremendous potential for bringing folks of diverse backgrounds together. They can also contribute to fracturing the Body Christ. One courtesy I ask of my commenters is to use "interpretive charity" (aka charitable interpretation). It means, among other things, that we should imagine the blogger or commenter we're about to smite with a withering retort as our dear, sweet grandmother. It also means we should attempt to address in advance ways in which our statements might be misunderstood. Why? Well, apparently textual communication leaves something to be desired. The following statements about email could easily be applied to blogging.

"Though e-mail is a powerful and convenient medium, researchers have identified three major problems. First and foremost, e-mail lacks cues like facial expression and tone of voice. That makes it difficult for recipients to decode meaning well. Second, the prospect of instantaneous communication creates an urgency that pressures e-mailers to think and write quickly, which can lead to carelessness. Finally, the inability to develop personal rapport over e-mail makes relationships fragile in the face of conflict."

[…]

"To avoid miscommunication, e-mailers need to look at what they write from the recipient's perspective… One strategy: Read it aloud in the opposite way you intend, whether serious or sarcastic. If it makes sense either way, revise."

78% of email senders believe they are clearly communicating. 91% of email receivers believe they are correctly interpreting. 56% of the time, the receiver correctly interprets the message. I wonder what the stats for blog posts and comments would be.

Language and Order

Witnessing all the recent hubbub about new English mass translation that’s just been approved by US bishops and the ever-present tensions between rival Bible translators, I thought the following quite from Peter Berger’s The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion might provoke interesting discussion.

"The social world constitutes a nomos both objectively and subjectively. The objective nomos is given in the process of objectivation as such. the fact of language, even if taken by itself, can readily be seen as the imposition of order upon experience. Language nomizes by imposing differentiation and structure upon the ongoing flux of experience. As an item of experience is named, it is ipso facto, taken out of this flux and given stability as the entity so named. Language further provides a fundamental order of relationships by the addition of syntax and grammar to vocabulary. It is impossible to use language without participating in its order. Every empirical language may be said to constitute a nomos in the making, or, with equal validity, as the historical consequence of the nomizing activity of generations of men. The original nomizing act is to say that an item is this, and thus not that. As this original incorporation of the item into the order that includes other items is followed by sharper linguistic designations (the item is male and not female, singular and not plural, a noun and not a verb, and so forth), the nomizing act intends a comprehensive order of all items that may be linguistically objectivated, that is, intends a totalizing nomos.

What I primarily take from this is the importance of word choice for the recording and transmission of information, i.e., order. When we translate Scripture or liturgies to modern languages, we must be mindful of a few important questions.

  • What sort of order did the original author(s) intend to impose with the words they chose?
  • What sort of order do we wish to impose with the words we choose?
  • If these orders do not match, why do they not, and how should that affect our translation efforts?

They’re Coming to America

I feel the need to write a political post, for a change. I've been observing the recent debate over immigration, and it's got me thinking. The part of the debate I dislike the most is the idea of a guest worker program. First of all, this system is in place in Germany (you know, one of those evil European powers that didn't support the war), but doesn't work that well. In Germany there is a sizable Turkish population (Turkish, but not born in Turkey), but the Turks stay low income and separated. In some parts of Europe this ghettoesque set up is fueling the terrorist cells. It doesn't work in Germany, but that's not what makes me cringe at the idea of an American guest worker program.

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A Case for Female Priests?

“Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and my fellow prisoners; they are prominent among the apostles and they were in Christ before me.” – Romans 16:7

Were there female apostles? Were all apostoloi also prebyteroi and/or episcopoi? Were there once female episcopoi/presbyteroi in the Church?

Investigating NFP: Sidebar on Definitions

In response to a debate in the comments to my first investigative post about NFP, I’ve decided to query my readers for their opinions.  Please consider answering these surveys. I’d like Catholics and non-Catholics alike to participate.

Survey link: Do you believe that "birth control" and "contraceptive" are synonymous?
Survey link: Do you believe that NFP/FAM is a method of contraception?