'In', 'for', or 'with'? plus 'eh?'

[Cunliffe D J (Comp)]

Hi All,

 

Well this list certainly seems to be livening up!

 

Susan Penfield wrote:

 

"...linguists today (unlike the way I was trained many, many years ago)
need to think of themselve as being in service to the community
(therefore not only working 'with' but also working 'for' and toward
community-based concerns -- as a priority )..." 

 

Which I think I would go along with, and which parallels many of the
concerns within "culturally appropriate" computing at the moment. People
are challenging previously well accepted notions of usability and
particular development methods, recognising that these contain cultural
bias. This is why I am interested in the cross-over of ideas and methods
from other disciplines that have already had this revelation.

 

As an aside, I was wondering whether there are tensions between
prioritising the needs of the community versus prioritising the needs of
the language? What is best for one is not necessarily best for the
other.


In response to Annie Ross' email, firstly I didn't particularly see it
as an attack on me or my views as some have (but maybe I am just dull).

 

"Love" might indeed be a radical concept in some contexts (perhaps in a
society based on arranged marriages), but equally it can be reactionary,
or even just total bollocks. (In case anyone thinks that 'bollocks' is
an indecent word I refer you to the Sex Pistols court case:
http://www.acc.umu.se/~samhain/summerofhate/courtcase.html) 

 

When I spoke of the need to "...re-radicalise the post-colonial agenda
within the post-modern neo-liberal context..." is was intended to be a
humorous example of the sort of thing that people like myself, who do
not have a grounding in these concepts, find difficult to put into
practice. It wasn't meant to make any sense - if it did it was by
accident rather than by design (a little knowledge is a dangerous
thing!).

 

Of course "fuck" is just a good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon way of saying
"make love to", and I think suggesting that we make love to the
labellers is a charming suggestion.

 

Of course humour is one of those very difficult areas with regard to
cultural differences - feel free to inset smileys in any of the above
wherever makes you most happy.

 

Be seeing you,

 

Daniel.

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