J. directed my attention to the twitter feed of the Museum of English Rural
Life, where you can see the copy book of a young boy long ago drew doodles
among his mathematical workings. He also drew a chicken in trousers, which
image provoked me to ask our chickens when the fashion for trousers faded. They
said they were too busy thinking to look into something as trivial as history.
“What are you thinking about?”
Mimo, “The nature of language, but there’s a problem we can’t find a way
around.”
“Which is?”
Appenzeller, “It’s hard to think about language in anything other than
language.”
“Could you not use bird talk?”
Pecorino, “There’s an idea!”
Mimo, “Bird talk’s a language too.”
Pecorino, “But it’s outside this language we’re using now. Maybe that’s
sufficiently distant for us to be able to get some perspective?”
“Perspicacious!” I said, with some admiration.
Pecorino, “…to get some perspicacious.”
My next contribution was a suggestion, “Maybe you need Saussure?”
Mimo, “There’s no such thing as a Saussure.”
“Are you sure?”
Appenzeller, “Bit of a tongue twister, that.”
“More of a riddle actually. What is the difference between langue and
language?”
Pecorino, “There isn’t any; they’re both foreign.”
Mimo, “One word is longer than the other.”
“The two can be thought of as synonymous, but not so when Saussure uses them.
He thinks of langue as a structure or code, a pattern that is quite different
from mere words.”
Appenzeller, “Aaaargh.”
Pecorino, “Aaaaargh.”
Mimo, “Aaaaargh, me hearties.”
They all started hopping about like peg-legged pirates and repeated the
“Aaaargh” sounds.
“I suppose ‘aaargh’ indicates some underlying system of signs.”
Pecorino, “Splice the mainbrace.”
Mimo, “Belay the billyrick.”
Pecorino, “Warble the nincompoop.”
“Clearly you understand, if not the words, something of the structure of
pretend-pirate.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Appenzeller, “is how the noise a dog makes and
a kind of ship are the same word.”
Pecorino, “We also considered the outside of trees.”
“Also the outside of trees,” Appenzeller agreed.
“Bloomers,” said Mimo.
“Come again?” I was finding the cross talk a bit swift.
“Chickens wore bloomers. Never trousers.”
“Never more,” was what slipped out at the end there.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
