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David Peterson's manifesto does a great job of justifying conlanging
to the non-conlanging public, and as such serves as a wonderful first
step towards the legitimization of conlanging. However, I take
conlanging a bit more seriously than that--I think of it as a
legitimate form of art, and I would like to see it recognized as such.
This thought, combined with some bad tendencies I was seeing on Conlang
at the time, prompted the following verbal explosion from me, which I
posted to Conlang:
From: Jesse Bangs
Date: Mon Mar 11, 2002 8:16 pm
Subject: Lighting Some Flames: Towards conlang artistry
To All Who Care About Conlanging:
The conlang community, both on this list and off, has been growing
steadily in the past several years, and it has just gotten another big
burst of growth from the release of the LOTR movies in the U.S. We now
have a famous, visible patriarch in the person of JRR Tolkien, at least
one professional member, Mark Okrand. Quenya and Klingon have
entered the common parlance as names of languages, and they have a
growing body of L2 speakers, a subculture, and media presence. Add to
this the hundreds of conlang websites that may be found in the Internet
and the presence of this community itself, and it seems that conlanging
may be on the verge of breaking into mainstream awareness and acceptance.
The "secret vice" has been out of the closet for a while, and it may
soon be into the limelight.
Yet there are still major obstacles to conlanging's acceptance as an art
form, both within the community of conlangers and without. The obstacles
from without include prejudices against conlangs as real languages, the
"nerdy" perception that conlangers have (and often cherish), and distrust
from the linguistic community. These problems have been addressed and
rebutted before, so I won't do it again here. Only time may remove all
of those problems. However, the obstacles from conlangers themselves are
greater, and can be addressed immediately. Of these problems, the one
that I wish to address here is the lack of a critical perspective within
the conlang community.
It should not need to be proved that some art is better than others. If
we as conlangers wish to gain acceptance for our art, then we need to
acknowledge this and allow for the judgement that some conlangs are
better than others. We need a serious body of *conlang criticism*.
Currently, this is almost entirely lacking on the Conlang list. When
someone posts texts or grammatical sketches, the responses are generally
entirely congratulatory, or they are concerned only with correcting
technical errors or confusions within the grammar. Often there are no
responses at all. While technical accuracy and consistency are
important, it's outrageous that this is where our critique stops. We
need to move beyond the foundation of technical accuracy and allow for
the artistic analysis of our conlangs.
Of course the objection is "by what criteria?" It's clear that we can't
all agree on one style of phonetic beauty, much less on which syntax,
morphology, or vocabulary is best. But this is, in fact, exactly what we
expect. The study of the history of art, music, or literature is a long
series of redefinitions of what is proper, what is better, and a constant
critical re-evaluation of everything that's gone before. This
chronological tension is an essential part of the formation of
literatures and arts, and if conlanging is to be an art instead of a
hobby, then it must also expect this. The important thing is that
conlanging start to have a critical apparatus within which the artistic
merits of conlangs can be evaluated and where different schools of
thought can define and defend themselves.
The thing to do, then, seems to be to start such a school, and simply get
down to the business of evaluating conlangs as works of art. I therefore
announce the founding of the Naturalist school of conlanging, which
regards the following three things as values:
- Naturalness, as the name implies. We prefer languages that resemble
natural languages, that could fool a linguist examining them into
thinking that they actually existed somewhere on the globe. Auxlangs and
philosophical langs are anathema because their very nature goes against
this value.
- Complexity and completeness. No natural language is completely
regular or completely simple, so neither will our languages.
Furthermore, we seek to describe and develop our languages as completely
as possible. Those who make dozens of half-finished sketches are
creating the equivalent of commercial jingles. We seek to create
symphonies.
- Creativity, defined as difference from your native language. If
your native language is Chinese, your target should be Ancient Greek. If
your native language is English, your target is Dyirbal (tonal, ergative
Australian language). Those who speak Italian and are only interested in
Romance-style conlangs earn no respect in this area. Those that seek to
challenge themselves and their learners are applauded.
Of course this won't be popular with everyone, especially not when I
start telling people why their conlangs suck. Why should it? If you
disagree with me, form your own school. But by all means, we have to
start allowing for the critical analysis of conlangs to make them into an
actual art form. As a side effect of this, we also have to start taking
each others conlangs seriously--putting in the time to understand and
evaluate them. Like everyone else on this list, my time is limited and I
can hardly take the time to look at every conlang that comes my way. But
I intend to start taking time to look closely at the conlangs of others
and myself and seeing how well they hold up to the Naturalist values. I
also intend to post my critiques to the list. Hopefully, we're mature
enough (as individuals and as a community) to take and give criticism
without resorting to whining and hurt feelings. And once again, if you
don't like it form your own school.
Responses, comments, counter-flames?
Originally from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/message/67563
This was doubtlessly the most controversial thing I have ever posted
to Conlang, and it did exactly what I had hoped--generated a huge
amount of commentary and opinion, most of it disagreeing with me. The
most vehement disagreement that people had was with the suggestion that
we form conlanging schools. People found this suggestion worrying,
fearing that it would lead to another break-up of the conlang list and
would destroy the spirit of camaraderie that makes the list so
agreeable now. Jan van Steenbergen had a well-reasoned response typical
of the concerns that others raised:
4. The diversity of our languages is enormous. Some of us are deeply into
science-fiction and like to create strange, alien languages for strange,
alien beings that sound like: "qipL##53x&p'omn3çyy$fåor/bzzzzz…", while
others rather enjoy creating a latinoid language with some local flavour
from elsewhere in Europe. Or try to create a present-day version of Crimean
Gothic or Dalmatian. Not to mention the creators of logical and auxiliary
languages.
My point is: we have a very small and very diverse community. If we were to
follow your ideas, it would soon split up into numerous tiny fractions,
part of which would instantly cease to exist. I don't see what purpose can
be served with such developments. Why create tension between those for whom
it is art and those for whom it is hobby, or between professional linguists
and amateurs?
Originally from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/message/67578
This objection I completely agreed with, and sort of did agree with
all along. I never wished to split up conlang, nor to destroy the
positive atmosphere of the list. A little friendly competition wouldn't
hurt anyone, but the serious divisiveness that some people feared was
never in my intent. Perhaps, if my rant were fully carried it, it would
be inevitable. I don't think so, but this is still a very valid
criticism.
Muke Tever had another angle on the question of conlang-as-art, which several people echoed:
Me personally, I look at conlangs more as craft than art--the things I think
make a good conlang first are standard things like that: the quality and
readability of the presentation; whether standard notations including but not
limited to phonemic/phonetic brackets, X-SAMPA, unicode, etc. are used;
completeness [not necessarily complexity or quantity of data, but at least a
workable phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and texts]. A conculture
per se is not necessary, although a statement of the purpose of the language is
always useful (at the very least something along the lines of "used in the
ancient scriptures of Martian ringworms in my new book")
Originally from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/message/67585
It seems to me that conlang-as-craft is not incompatible with
conlang-as-art--Christophe Grandsire raised the analogy of
architecture, which requires tremendous technical skill but is still
doubtlessly artistic. Nonetheless, it turns out that there are a great
many people on conlang who think of themselves more as hobbyists than
artists. This baffled me at first—who wouldn't want to see their
creations valued as art? Nonetheless, plenty of self-proclaimed conlang
hobbyists supported this distinction, so I retreated just a little bit
to allow that not all conlangs are art or need to be viewed as such.
Still, craftsmanship is essential to good artistry, and a strong
community of non-artist conlangers will still be good for those of us
who actually view our creations as art. The final criticism that
people had that I agree with was actually one of the strongest--that
the entire notion of critical schools is unnecessary and banal. Peter
Clark made this wonderful observation: But if you will permit me to be negative for a moment, setting up
"schools" is not the way to do it. I was an English major (Planned
Poverty, I call it) in college, and had to suffer through the various
"schools." Let's see if I can remember all five: Marxist, Feminist,
Psychoanalytic, Reader-Response, and...darn, I forgot. You know what?
It was all a bunch of bull. You know who ends up in literary schools?
The ones who can't write. They can't write decent literature to save
their skins, so they fill up journal after journal with this phony
nonsense. I was so happy to get out of that and into the creative
writing classes. There, no one ever said one word about "schools". We
would read each other's works, try to understand what the author was
trying to communicate, and comment on how well the plot structure and
devices aided toward the communication of that idea and how successful
we felt the writing to be. _That_ is the only "school" I will ever
believe in, because it doesn't limit me to one set of glasses. Getting
genuine feedback from others *who knew that they were talking about*
was extremely valuable, infinitely more so than trying to read a
classic through a Marxist critique, especially when the author predated
Marxism! Ok, enough rant. So, once again, I applaud your instinct, but
discourage your solution. If we as a group commit to more in-depth
analysis and study of each other's languages, we would do quite well.
If we could figure out a way to dedicate a period of time, say a week,
to the detailed examination of one conlang, that would be wonderful, as
it would reduce the distraction created by other examinations.
Conlanging is an art, but I don't want it to become "ART" (said with
a very nasal tone.) It would suck the life, the fun out of conlanging
if we suddenly had to deal with intellectual snobbery. I come from the
world of literature, where the snobbery is so thick you can cut it with
a knife. That's not what I want to see happen. We don't need to be like
everybody else. After all, we clearly are not like everyone else. :) We
are practicers of the domestic art, the quiet hobby, the silent
symphony. I don't want my conlang to become a vehicle of some
"message." It is because it is. Critique it for its success in reaching
its desired goals, but let's not seek to turn conlanging into something
that it is not.
Originally from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/message/67588
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