My recent study of the history of utopianism and science fiction has spilled over into my musings about conlangers and speculations about alt culture. I think there is something essentially trivial about today's conlangers as there is about TV/cinematic sci fi. And therefore I think there is something grievously missed on the sociological plane by Arika Okrent who has otherwise rendered a great service by documenting this phenomenon. I also think that the otherwise admirable Sam Green made some serious and harmful errors in his two documentaries on utopias and Esperanto, for which Okrent is also egregiously guilty in the latter. She is a linguist, not a historian or social theorist. Thank Godless I'm a baby boomer. These younger folks have no sense of history.
I am being uncustomarily diplomatic here. Somewhere I wrote what is
wrong with the Esperanto documentary. I think Sam compounded
Okrent's misrepresentation of the era that produced Esperanto. As
for the Four Utopias and Sam's documentary approach, Stephen
Squibb nailed what is wrong with it.
I get constant updates in my Facebook newsfeed from conlangers, and
while I find the resources available in this area far more
sophisticated than what I recall being available in the era of
marginal print culture when I was a teenager, something has declined
in one area as sophistication has grown in another. In the old days,
most of the conlangers (when the term did not exist) at least
pretended to be interested in an international auxiliary language,
with an admixture of eccentrics and outright cranks making big
claims, especially those inventing a priori languages. (I
am so glad I was finally able to acquire my own copy of Fuishiki
Okamoto's 1962 book on BABM at the 2010 Esperanto USA
congress, which I recall from my nerd salad days haunting the
Buffalo main library.) In those days the figure most known for
inventing languages for the hell of it was J.R.R. Tolkien (whose
medieval nostalgia I soon learned to disdain), which he referred to
as a guilty pleasure. It was something for male nerds just past
puberty to do in those days, in a far more innocent but hardly
idyllic time.
Now artificial languages are commissioned ad hoc for
superficially sophisticated sci fi and fantasy films and TV shows.
But Dothraki could not get me to endure Game of Thrones.
And my opinion of Avatar
was none too favorable either. I have already expressed my "esteem"
for Klingon (see the post reproduced below).
All of this reminds me of a visit to Buffalo in the past year, in
which I was taken to a congregation of a sci fi film club,
coincidentally located a block from where I grew up. I had to endure
episode 6 of Star Wars all over again, a scenario so
preposterous even the person who brought me found it dubious. Every
stereotype you can imagine about this subculture is true; the
reality is even worse, much seedier and much more awful than
anything I grew up with. It's a sad case of arrested development.
There are, of course, a few conlangs of philosophical or ideological
interest: Lojban, Laadan, maybe Toki Pona and a few others. I don't
think so highly of these either, but the conlanging hobby as I see
it flowing into my newsfeed strikes me as decidedly infantile, as
infantile as blockbuster films and "reality" TV, more childish even
than all the crackpot Esperantists combined I've encountered over
the past 45 years. Esperanto, at least, was designed for a serious
purpose, and its subcultures exist at least to communicate, and
while conlanging is a creative endeavor as any other, most of it in
the final analysis is as pointless and redundant as the latest
American film or TV series. O Stanislaw Lem, where art thou when I
need thee?
Sociology of Klingonism, 23 December 2010
If I could have projected my 14-year old self forward in time more
than four decades, I would have reveled in today's conlanger world.
While I outgrew direct involvement in this sort of thing, I retain
an interest in documenting it, and I can more or less respect the
hobby . . . except when it comes to Klingon. Arika Okrent has
provided a forceful argument that involvement with Klingon is not
contemptible after all, which almost had me convinced, but
ultimately I revert to the anonymous cynic who insisted that the
existence of Klingon speakers is an argument for forced
sterilization.
Now comes this sociological study, parts of which I find quite
fascinating, as Mr. Spock would. Who knew that Pierre Bourdieu would
be marshaled to analyze the Klingon phenom?
Klingon as Linguistic Capital: A Sociologic Study of Nineteen
Advanced Klingonists
[Hol Sup 'oH tlhIngan Hol'e' wa'maH Hut tlhIngan Hol po'wI' nughQeD
]
Yens Wahlgren, Bachelor’s thesis, Soc 346, 41–60 p, Spring semester
2004, Department of Sociology, Lund University
http://www.angelfire.com/trek/yensw/PDF/thesis.pdf
Esperanto is cited for comparison, including Peter Forster's 1982
sociological study,
The Esperanto Movement.
One surprising--to me--twist here is the dissociation between
Klingonists and Trekkies. (I think they prefer to be called
Trekkers, but I prefer the more supercilious term). I would think
that Klingonism would be Trekkiehood taken to the point of a
psychotic break, but oddly, many Klingonists begin with a
fascination with the language and not with the fictional universe
from which it originates.
Many Klingonists seems to lose their interest in Star
Trek after speaking Klingon a while. This may be a result of that
the average age is higher among Klingonists than Klingon fans.
Star Trek fandom is in many ways a youth culture (Gibberman,
1991).
However the KLI as a socializing institution is probably one
reason for the fact that many Klingonists not consider themselves
as trekkers anymore. In the process of Klingonists becoming
Klingonists is not only the process of languages learning. A kind
of secondary socialization (Berger & Luckmann) is occurring
when interacting in the peer group of KLI. Officially the KLI
emphasize that they not are a fan organization. Their journal it
is not a newsletter or a fanzine, it is supposed to be a scholarly
journal, indexed by the Modern Language Association, that uses
blind peer review. The education level of the Klingonists is as we
have seen very high and it would be reasonable to assume that the
use of an academic language and style is endorsed.
But compare this to respondent Adam:
The fact that there’s a rich fictional background to the
Klingons gives this language incredible character, and makes
speaking it fun.
If you’re speaking Esperanto, you can’t ask yourself, ‘how would
an esperantoan express this idea,’ because there’s no such thing
as an Esperantoan. There are fictional Klingons with a fictional
culture, so one can ask ‘How would a (fictional) Klingon express
this idea,’ and that makes it more fun.”
Note the perversity:
Many Klingonists choose to perceive and treat Klingon as
a “real”, actual alien language and not as an artificial language.
Thus they are not interested in creating new words for human
concepts. Their goal with the language is not that it will be as
easy as possible to use for humans, but rather they want to
understand how Klingons use their language. This adds another
dimension to the Klingon community. To become a notable member
among Klingonists linguistic capital is not enough -- you need
cultural capital as well to know how a Klingon would think in a
certain situation. Or more specifically: how the group of
Klingonists think Klingons think.
However, the influence of attempting to adapt Klingon to earthly
needs is also felt.
The dissociation between interest in the Klingons in the Trekkie
universe & the Klingon language is quite intriguing:
In the ordinary Klingon fan world where role-playing and
dressing-up as Klingons is the major activity, the knowledge of
Klingon is to be considered as sub-cultural capital, in the eyes
of the relevant beholder. Though to be a Klingonist seems not
automatically to get you sub-cultural capital. By judging from my
informants opinions there is a conflict between Klingon fans and
Klingonists. To actually learn the full Klingon language is seen
as a waste of time and somewhat strange. In my opinion this
conflict can be connected to the fact that the KLI states that it
is not a fan organisation. It may as well be a result of different
focuses; the KLI’s primary concern is intellectual and the fan
groups activities is more practical (creating uniforms, Klingon
weapons etc.)
Different respondents have different views, of course, so I may
sense a contradiction based on conflating informants, but it's odd,
I think, to wonder how a Klingon thinks without being interested in
Klingons, i.e. as they exist in the
Star Trek cosmos. It's
like being interested in a culture without being interested in it. I
suppose this could be just a small step beyond being interested in a
language only for the language. So I guess this is not as pathetic
as dressing up as a Klingon after all. Still, wondering how a
Klingon thinks is like wondering how a thug from South Buffalo would
express himself, and I'm glad I haven't had to think about that for
some decades.
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