Language is a constantly evolving negotiation of new and remixed communications, performed through billions of interactions every single day. It's collaborative and unpredictable and sometimes someone comes up with something cool and the next day everybody is copying them.

In short, language is socially constructed.

I think it's a great analogy for gender in that respect.

[–] kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Objective and socially constructed isn't a 'hard' contradiction.

Yes of course language evolves and so on, but in a given time(period) it needs to be interpretable more or less independently from the specific actor (a dictionary ensures this, even though it needs to be updated regularly).

In other words yeah sometimes language comes up with new stuff. If it would do it all the time, it wouldn't function

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It does change all the time, and dictionaries don't ensure any kind of standard. The linguists who write dictionaries will tell you that their only function is to describe the most popular parts of the language, not to prescribe any particular rules. Telling people how they should speak doesn't actually work.

I could say the phrase "abso-fucking-lutely" and you understand it, even though it's not in the dictionary. That's still language, it's still English.

And I don't know what you mean by a "'hard' contradiction" or why that matters. My point is that both language and gender are forms of communication that rely on socially constructed signifiers and they are both fluid to a similar degree, so the analogy is good. If you want to argue with me, that's the point you should be dealing with.

[–] kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well my point is just it's neither fully determined as in ahistoric rule nor random as in "changes all the time" or "everyone has their own singular definitions and concepts". And in between there is the sweet spot of understanding, interpretation and development..

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago

Right, but nobody except grammar nazis and the sith deal in absolutes like that.

Obviously the signifiers have a level of stability otherwise nobody would understand any of it.

This is yet another way in which language and gender are analogous.

[–] CodexArcanum@lemmy.world -2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

People don't know what words mean in English either yet continue trying to force their made up definitions on others.

Language is objective, because a language is an immaterial object. The opposite, subjective, would impy that language itself has an experience of the world as an entity in itself; that it is a subject.

People's understanding of the languages they speak is subjective (the subject is the person), but their use of language is objective, because they create objects (words, sentences) in the air or on a screen. When another person, a subject, reads those objective words, they then have a new subjective understanding of them. But the words, and the language, remain objects.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Words are objects in a sense, although they are abstract, but there is no singular objective language in the same way that there is no objective gender. Both are intersubjective, they are interactions negotiated between subjects. There is no fixed object that you can point to and call "language" independent of a subjective experience of that language.

And your argument could be applied to expressions of gender. A feminine dress is an object, and a beard is an object. These are gender signifiers, but that doesn't make gender itself objective in any way. The analogy to language is very close. They are both sets of signifiers.

[–] kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

Subjective in this sense would mean everyone has their own singular way as opposed to "its the same/similar indepently of the person looking at it".