Witters says in "Philosophical Investigations" that if meaning is use, then
surely banning an use is banning a meaning.
In Germany (and Austria) banning is frequent. The Germans (and Austrians)
are what Jerome K. Jerome call a "law-abiding people"* and Witters is true
to his national origin.
In a message dated 10/17/2015 8:33:04 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
There is a brilliant dystopian novel about a country where the government,
to curry favour with the voters, bans all words with "impli-" at the
beginning and where the hero, a genius with a fascination for linguistic
minutiae, has to use all his ingenuity to evade the ban - including making up
words. The novel races to its climax with the hero churning out more and more
new words as fast as the government bans the ones he has come up with so far
- until a crucial point is reached where all words have been used up and
are banned and neither the government nor the genius to can do anything
more, and the whole country is reduced to a stalemate where no one can say
anything. At this point the people silently rise up and take the genius and the
government outside and pelt some sense into them with rotten fruit and
vegetables."
Is the novel set in Vienna? That was Witters's milieu?
O. T. O. H., Grice's milieu was the affluent suburb of Halborne in what
used to be called Warwickshire, but is now part of "Greater Brum" (Grice never
understood this use of "Greater"**)
** As in "Greater London" ("The town seems to be implicating that there is
a Lesser London, and more provocatively, a Greatest London"). "Lesser
London" would be "W1" -- Evelyn Waugh's biographer recounts how Waugh, who
lived
in W2, would walk all the way to W1 to have his mail posted from W1 --
"little London".
In Italian, all words starting with "impli-" got corrupted into "impie-"
since Dante Aligheri dismissed the consonant group "-pl-" as "rude to the
ear" (he meant his own (right) ear).
So we guess the novel is NOT set in Renaissance Italy.
Cheers,
Speranza
* In the Grosse Garten in Dresden I once came across an old lady, standing,
helpless and bewildered, in the centre of seven tracks. Each was guarded
by a threatening notice, warning everybody off it but the person for whom
it was intended.
“I am sorry to trouble you,” said the old lady, on learning I could speak
English and read German, “but would you mind telling me what I am and
where I have to go?”
I inspected her carefully. I came to the conclusion that she was a “
grown-up” and a “foot-goer,” and pointed out her path. She looked at it, and
seemed disappointed.
“But I don’t want to go down there,” she said; “mayn’t I go this way?”
“Great heavens, no, madam!” I replied. “That path is reserved for
children.”
“But I wouldn’t do them any harm,” said the old lady, with a smile. She
did not look the sort of old lady who would have done them any harm.
“Madam,” I replied, “if it rested with me, I would trust you down that
path, though my own first-born were at the other end; but I can only inform
you of the laws of this country. For you, a full-grown woman, to venture
down that path is to go to certain fine, if not imprisonment. There is your
path, marked plainly—Nur für Fussgänger, and if you will follow my advice,
you will hasten down it; you are not allowed to stand here and hesitate.”
“It doesn’t lead a bit in the direction I want to go,” said the old lady.
“It leads in the direction you ought to want to go,” I replied, and we
parted.
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