This is a clip from Patricio Guzman’s La Batalla de Chile, a documentary on the golpe de estado on 9/11/1973 when the longest standing democracy died in America de Sur.
check out time: 6 mins 11 seconds—how 1 trabajador got to work when the buses were on strike. its a powerful clip even if you dont get to watch the whole 5 hour documentary. “¡Crear, Crear, Poder Popular!”
the verb “read” as its currently understood is inadequate. “reading” is just too simplistic. it implies that written work only conveys through content and reduces its form to a grammatical rubric by which one applies rules merely to decode that content. this understanding more accurately depicts the process of listening to spontaneous spoken language-but as of yet “reading” refers to written work. i say this mode of “reading” disfigures written work.
but let me clarify, written work can be used, yes, to perform many of the functions of spoken language. it also is capable of being art. when this is true, we need to do more than just read it. we need to observe, examine, and contemplate it like any other art form.
regarding this commentary, i think there is missing an essential division between written and spoken language. The two are quite different. Spoken language is, according to the Chompsky camp, spontaneous like an instinct all people have. it is just like an organ (one’s speaking faculty) functioning all the time complete with grammar, lexicon, and phonetics. people just speak “grammatically.” unless they have some sort of physical brain problem or never acquired a language before the critical period.
the concept of “correct and incorrect” is not really something one applies to spoken language. therefore once someone decides that a group of people do not speak according to the proper register this is just false—according to the chompsky camp with whom 95% of linguists are on board. its racist/regionalist and linguistically false to say that BEV (black english vernacular) which is spoken in many parts of the south is less than correct.
written language is something different. i am just now trying to put a lot more thought to this issue in thinking about some of the things i have been encountering in class.
“The overwhelming majority of people view language rules such as spelling and grammar as static and coming from a place of authority. This is false, as both constitute discursive practices and there is no single authority on the English language. Therefore, arguing for a “correct” form of…
“Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” or DSM defines a mental disorder as “a behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in a person and that is associated with present distress or disability or with a sgnificantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom. In addition, this syndrome or pattern must not be merely an expectable and culturally sanctioned response to a particular event, for example, the death of a loved one. Whatever its original cause, it must currently be considered a manifestaion of a behavioral, psychological, or biological dsyfunction in the individual.” -quoted from my pysch text quoted from the MANUAL.
