Hello.

In America, television networks love to recap what happened on the last episode before they move on. Clearly, they are incapable of trusting their viewers to remember the main events of a show they enjoy for a week. For that reason, I will endeavour to keep this recap short and with at least some original thought.

Starting the course, I was intrigued as to why so much time is devoted to it in the IB, when other courses largely choose to ignore it. Having spent a term looking at areas such as language and knowledge, it seems like this makes much more sense than I originally pondered upon. There is little point in learning everything if you don’t know how to apply it and how it works at its core, two things which both the IB course and this class focus on.

With this, I now wonder why other courses (especially those which are government mandated) don’t have much commitment to the concept or theory of knowledge. Given the generally higher scores of IB students, surely education and departmental boards would see the value in pursuing some form of this in class? Maybe the IB has patented the Theory of Knowledge course!

Language and meaning has taken up a good bulk of the term (or certainty the most memorable part of it) and so there’s a good wave of information that I now think about before writing or speaking blindly — how do the words I choose affect the consistency or persuasiveness of a discussion? Where do we find our vocabularies? What are the (sometimes ancient) roots of words that we use constantly today? There are several questions that may not necessarily be front of mind all the time but are important when thinking about words and the connection to knowledge they hold, especially in relation to speeches and essay writing, something I recently explored on this very journal.

Speaking of which, this journal is just getting started. Soon we begin a new chapter in the textbook and so a new chapter of this blog, if you can call it that. Expect more posts as the year goes on and our class explores more and more areas of knowledge itself.

I’ve republished my previous Theory of Knowledge essay for thoughts and opinions. Writing an essay is a fine art. It takes time and effort to ‘get it right’ and you can never be sure how it will be perceived by people other than yourself. This is particularly evident in the subjects dominated by long form writing. English, of course, requires excellent writing skills but even then the most skilled essay writers and journalists in the world will no doubt tell the inexperienced year eleven student that it can be difficult to express a thorough and complete argument in just a few pages.

I thought about this over the past few days and I feel like there’s a nice visual way of explaining this:

The left represents you, as both the author and the reader. When you write an essay which expresses everything you want to get across, you feel like everything can be easily understood. So does any reader, shown on the right chart.

When you start getting confused with your main message, spend too long getting side tracked, or you miss the main question (something I fell into the trap of with my latest piece) you can probably still come out at the end of it, read over the essay a few times and get the main “gist” of your opinion. As the author, you can complete the gaps yourself since you know better than anyone else what you’re supposed to be talking about. So it would be fair to say you feel 75% confident with what you’ve produced.

But the reader, who obviously lacks the ability to venture inside your mind and dig out the parts you forgot to include, sees nothing more than the traps I described above. Thus, what appears to be an “almost there” message to the author becomes a “nothing there” to the average reader. I tested this with a few friends and family (using my most recent article) and this is based on my observations there. I usually found that most of what I was trying to say was misinterpreted because I wasn’t clear or persuasive enough in my key arguments.

With some luck, this analysis won’t seem quite as confused as my essays sometimes can be!

This also concludes my series on language, at least until it is mentioned or discussed in class again. Considering how important it is to almost everything we do talk about in class, I have a feeling that won’t be long.

To what extent is language an effective vehicle of knowledge?

It is very easy to underestimate the power of language. Trillions of words, in hundreds of languages, all around the world, are written and spoken every single day. Despite the significance it holds, the concept of language as an effective vehicle of knowledge is barely discussed, with the focus instead on what is being expressed. Essential questions such as the ability in showing knowledge and documentation of changes in language over its extensive history are, in fact, of paramount importance.

language |ˈla ng gwij| noun

1 the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way : a study of the way children learn language 

| [as adj. ] language development.

knowledge |ˈnälij| noun

1 facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject : a thirst for knowledge 

| her considerable knowledge of antiques.

Definitions sometimes miss the critical point of a word or phrase, but before any opinion can be formed, a discussion about language and knowledge will benefit from referring to what is essentially a convergence of the two – dictionaries offer a comprehensive guide to our language and as a result, form the perfect vehicle of knowledge.

Unlike a dictionary definition, however, language is not static. It has existed (in one form or another) and gradually shifted since its very beginning, long before this generation’s time. The origin of language is, of course, remarkably different to the form of language used today. Thousands of years ago symbols constituted a written record of events, whether they be religious or purely historical. Complex systems were created and used to communicate and express knowledge and ideas in an ancient era.

Since then, attitudes towards language have completely changed. Somewhere along the long and unpredictable road that is this world’s history, letters and words became the dominant force in expression, and its universality has led to the beauty of the printed word, or the power of the spoken argument. Or one of the thousands of other applications for language and the communication of knowledge.

What is so interesting about this incredible development and growth of the word is that the people who rely on it so heavily seem to be preparing to abandon it. The power of the internet is similarly easy to underestimate and the emergence of user created content, whether it be something as significant as an influential online news journalist’s latest column or a status update shared with the world by one of Facebook’s more than five hundred million users, abbreviated words and symbols (“emoticons” or the solve-all for showing emotion with three characters or less) are increasingly widespread. Urban Dictionary, a website which aims to document words and phrases most commonly used online or amongst the youth of the twenty first century, is one of the most popular online language resources and many see it as their dictionary of choice, not unlike the way many use Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” as their primary news source. Just last week, the Oxford English Dictionary added “lol”, “omg” and even (with some well deserved controversy) “♥.” Yes, the symbol.

Is it possible that a full circle in language sophistication is just around the corner? The ancient cryptographs and symbolic communication could become the norm once again. Though one should not necessarily be alarmed at the appearance of a symbol in the dictionary (some will no doubt question the issue of which letter symbols should be placed under), this is simply a confirmation of what is already in widespread use by what is still a fairly conservative organisation.

There are some flaws in this logic. For one the use of symbols in language via a Twitter update or a text message, for example, might not be considered “a vehicle of knowledge.” More importantly, it also conveniently ignores the Asian languages, which almost exclusively use a system of symbols in communicating written knowledge. All of this leads us to the question: can knowledge be expressed through symbols?

The Asian languages prove that knowledge is not limited when defined through symbols. Japan and China, two of the three most advanced economies in the world, have and will continue to use this system of communication and with Asian languages fast overtaking the European languages as the most widely used in the world, it’s more than likely that these symbols will play a role in other regions too.

At the same time, the paradigm shifts observed here are over an incredibly long period of time, and only with the benefit of hindsight can conclusions be drawn. Though it has been established that words are not the only effective option as a vehicle for knowledge, it would take some time to truly find out the answer. Whether words or symbols are more effective simply cannot be fully discussed at this point, where the two parallels are still growing and are far from perfect.

The inventible changes in the way we use language show that while it may appear to be perfectly effective, there is often a different, maybe better way of thinking that can be found elsewhere, as the use of symbols in other cultures demonstrates. Meanwhile, our own language (which this very essay is using to convey knowledge and thought) has completed a “full circle” where words are abbreviated, chopped, cut down and transformed. Whether this will continue to have the effect it has so far remains to be seen, but the future of language and its effectiveness is fascinating to say the least. Whether it is discussed in the context of a particular example or on a much broader scale, language and knowledge should always be discussed and its effectiveness must always be judged.

We’ve spent a great deal of time in class arguing the benefits of verbal vs written vs symbolic language, and there seems to be a general focus on the development of language both in the past and certainly in the future.

Recently, we used class time to look at the origin of language as a whole and even specific words. One of the introductory activities we completed involved matching words to their language and country of origin, which not only revealed some surprising results but more significantly, seemed to conclude that English is very much a language which has borrowed (or stolen, depending on your perspective) much of its vocabulary.

This is a film which shouldn’t be called a film. It shouldn’t even be called a documentary. The message of the video is so realistically portrayed that it’s almost impossible to argue the story has been modified or fabricated in any way.

That might be the point. Perhaps the twist in this story is so unbelievable that it really has been invented. Perhaps the subjects are actually characters, and the unfolding events are nothing more than a plot, but the video is fantastically shot and edited I’m convinced it’s all very true.

As a concept, it’s not that shocking. We hear stories almost every day about how Facebook has changed the meaning of friendship — even relationships — with example after example, followed by an opinion piece on how this damages society. What makes Catfish so fantastic, though, is that nothing is said on screen to come to a conclusion about Facebook, or even the people involved in the film. Instead, all viewers are given at the end is a simple stream of facts. The somewhat condescending tone that many documentaries hold doesn’t exist here, and that makes for a far more interesting film — and that’s exactly the point this piece is making.

Rather than sing the praises of Catfish (of which there are many) or point out its weaknesses (of which there are also many), this “review” suggests only that Catfish is one of the most interesting films of the decade.

That will have to do for now, because it’s becoming more and more difficult to write about a film of which you simply cannot reveal any details about. To do so would spoil the fun!