Deconstruction
Deconstruction. Penyahbinaan. Such was the nature of the confusing sociological term (and now I'm not even sure if it was sociological) that was hounding at me most of yesterday night.
No, it wasn't actually as bad as that. I generally spent most of the night happily letting my mind listen to a continued explanation and extension of Hizami's idea of deconstruction. It started from after Isya' til about 11.00 am, in widely varied locations like the surau, the cafe, and finally the bench that we know refer to affectionately with the name of a friend. There was a linguistics term for this redefining of our reality we had applied to the poor bench. And I wonder where my time for NaNoWriMo goes to.
The gist of what I got was this: an idea, concept, or word can be deconstructed into many components which are based around the representation of that idea/word/concept. And you can isolate or remove some components to redefine that concept, and this redefinition would be its reconstruction. No, it doesn't make much sense to me either.
It stems from the idea that the the idea of a word is divorced from the reality of the word. The example in this case was a tree. There is a tangible object, in this case a tree, and there is our idea of tree, which is not connected to the reality of a tree at all.
I'll refer to the tangible one with quotation marks ("tree") while the concept as T-R-E-E.
Alright, here comes the part that I think made sense to me. When we mention/hear/think about a tree, we imagine a T-R-E-E. I fact, this T-R-E-E does not bring into our mind a "tree" at all: it brings to mind concepts related to the "tree", like green, bark, and durians.
Therefore we could isolate the components of the T-R-E-E and give a name to those elements. For example, we call the green things that grow on branches 'leaves'. Note that you'd need a word for the concept of 'branch'.
We could also remove some components from the T-R-E-E, and from there redefine a new concept. I'll keep this example simple:
T-R-E-E - concept of 'tree trunk' = concept of 'shrub'
It works both ways. If someone were to describe the main components of T-R-E-E; we'd end up thinking of a 'tree'. Of course, if not enough information was given, for example not mentioning the trunk, you might not be able to be sure if the person's describing a 'tree' or a 'shrub'. But you do know that what is being described will come under 'foliage'.
Not that it's rare. We do generalise people into categories. I once referred to a group of English-speaking, stylish group of girls as 'Uptown Girls.' Creating that definition is the step of (initial) construction.
From there I could deconstruct it to the concepts I have in mind e.g. 'English-speaking', 'fashoinable', 'tall', ...
Now I remove one of the components, let's say 'fashionable' for this example. And then I reconstruct the whole thing, creating a new concept. This concept I then call 'Uptown Disasters'.
Yes, you could redefine everything under the sun to what you want it to be. It's like the way that some communities have different terms than others. Eskimos are said to have a lot of words that mean 'snow', but to them those words all have distinct meanings. Someone who is uneducated about carsx will have an idea about cars, but it's vague compared to our ideas of 'Honda', 'Mercedes-Benz', 'BMW', 'Ferrari' and I'll add 'Proton' just for good measure.
Yes, my NaNoWriMo is suffering because of these sociological ideas. I'm at 31,000 words, about 3000 words away from my 1700 word/day goal.
More statistics? I write about 1000 words per hour, which means I'll need to fill in 3 hours of writing, and I left my laptop at college. The best time for writing is when I'm in the car, returning to college. Well, at least I brought my thumb drive with my NaNoWriMo in it.
No, it wasn't actually as bad as that. I generally spent most of the night happily letting my mind listen to a continued explanation and extension of Hizami's idea of deconstruction. It started from after Isya' til about 11.00 am, in widely varied locations like the surau, the cafe, and finally the bench that we know refer to affectionately with the name of a friend. There was a linguistics term for this redefining of our reality we had applied to the poor bench. And I wonder where my time for NaNoWriMo goes to.
The gist of what I got was this: an idea, concept, or word can be deconstructed into many components which are based around the representation of that idea/word/concept. And you can isolate or remove some components to redefine that concept, and this redefinition would be its reconstruction. No, it doesn't make much sense to me either.
It stems from the idea that the the idea of a word is divorced from the reality of the word. The example in this case was a tree. There is a tangible object, in this case a tree, and there is our idea of tree, which is not connected to the reality of a tree at all.
I'll refer to the tangible one with quotation marks ("tree") while the concept as T-R-E-E.
Alright, here comes the part that I think made sense to me. When we mention/hear/think about a tree, we imagine a T-R-E-E. I fact, this T-R-E-E does not bring into our mind a "tree" at all: it brings to mind concepts related to the "tree", like green, bark, and durians.
Therefore we could isolate the components of the T-R-E-E and give a name to those elements. For example, we call the green things that grow on branches 'leaves'. Note that you'd need a word for the concept of 'branch'.
We could also remove some components from the T-R-E-E, and from there redefine a new concept. I'll keep this example simple:
T-R-E-E - concept of 'tree trunk' = concept of 'shrub'
It works both ways. If someone were to describe the main components of T-R-E-E; we'd end up thinking of a 'tree'. Of course, if not enough information was given, for example not mentioning the trunk, you might not be able to be sure if the person's describing a 'tree' or a 'shrub'. But you do know that what is being described will come under 'foliage'.
Not that it's rare. We do generalise people into categories. I once referred to a group of English-speaking, stylish group of girls as 'Uptown Girls.' Creating that definition is the step of (initial) construction.
From there I could deconstruct it to the concepts I have in mind e.g. 'English-speaking', 'fashoinable', 'tall', ...
Now I remove one of the components, let's say 'fashionable' for this example. And then I reconstruct the whole thing, creating a new concept. This concept I then call 'Uptown Disasters'.
Yes, you could redefine everything under the sun to what you want it to be. It's like the way that some communities have different terms than others. Eskimos are said to have a lot of words that mean 'snow', but to them those words all have distinct meanings. Someone who is uneducated about carsx will have an idea about cars, but it's vague compared to our ideas of 'Honda', 'Mercedes-Benz', 'BMW', 'Ferrari' and I'll add 'Proton' just for good measure.
Yes, my NaNoWriMo is suffering because of these sociological ideas. I'm at 31,000 words, about 3000 words away from my 1700 word/day goal.
More statistics? I write about 1000 words per hour, which means I'll need to fill in 3 hours of writing, and I left my laptop at college. The best time for writing is when I'm in the car, returning to college. Well, at least I brought my thumb drive with my NaNoWriMo in it.