all-vowel slang of the Silentistsârepeatedly smashes the model house within, proving that sound alone can distress and destroy an object. His essay, âThe Last Language,â argues for an experimental national vow of silence, claiming that spoken language is a pollutant that must be arrested, first by stuffing the mouths of unnecessary speakers (âpersons whose message has already been heardâ) with cloth. Before his death, in 1991, he will build a mouth harness (the Speech Jacket) that limits its wearer to a daily quota of spoken language, beyond which he or she must remain silent until the next day, or else trigger a mild explosive that will destroy the mouth. The Speech Jacket is tested first on children. Although it causes intermittent blackouts and fainting, it serves to restrict their speech to requests for food and short displays of all-vowel singing.
The Name Machine
IâLL NOT BE ABLE TO LIST each name we called my sister. The process would be exhausting, requiring me to relive my sisterâs pitiful life. There are additionally copyright issues connected with persons that are officially the holdings of the government, which is still the case with my sister, despite her demise. To reproduce the precise arc of names that she traversed during her life in our house would be to infringe on a life narrative owned by the American Naming Authority. It will suffice to select those names sufficiently resonant of her, ones that will seem to speak of the girl she was rather than of some general American female figure, although it could be argued that we can no longer speak with any accuracy of a specific person, that the specific person has evolved and given way to the general woman, distinguished primarily by her name.
The names defined here derive from a bank of easily pronounceable and typical slogans used to single out various female persons of America and beyond. A natural bias will be evident toward names that can be sounded with the mouth. The snap, clap, and wave, while useful and namelike in their effect (the woman or girl is alerted, warned, reminded, soothed), are generally of equal use against men, and therefore of little use here. Gestures of language that require no accompanying vocal pitch, such as gendered semaphore, used in the Salt Flats during the advent of womenâs silent television, or Womenâs Sign Language (WSL), developed in the â70s as a highly stylized but difficult offshoot of American Sign Language, now nearly obsolete because of the strenuous demands it placed upon the hips and hands, were never successful enough with my sister to warrant inclusion in the study. She plainly didnât respond to the various postures and physical attitudes we presented to herâour contortions and pantomime proved not theatrical enough to distract her into action. No shapes we made with our hands could convince her that there was important language to be had in our activity, and she often sat at the window, waiting for a spoken name, without which she could not begin the task of becoming herself.
This is certainly not to imply that communication between persons and living things requires tone or sound, or that deaf figures of the female communities can have no names. There is always written text, to be apprehended through visual or tactile means, as well as the German-American technique of âhandlingâ the name of a woman onto her thigh. My sister, as it happens, did not respond in any useful way to our repeated and varied handling of her body. As rough as we were, it made no apparent impression on her.
Here the American female name is regarded as a short, often brilliant word. Rarely should it inaccurately capture the person it targets, and its resistance to alternate uses, modifications, translations, and disruptions is an affirmation that individuals can and should be
entirely defined
by a sharp sound out of the mouthâthese definitions have simply yet to be
The Name Machine
IâLL NOT BE ABLE TO LIST each name we called my sister. The process would be exhausting, requiring me to relive my sisterâs pitiful life. There are additionally copyright issues connected with persons that are officially the holdings of the government, which is still the case with my sister, despite her demise. To reproduce the precise arc of names that she traversed during her life in our house would be to infringe on a life narrative owned by the American Naming Authority. It will suffice to select those names sufficiently resonant of her, ones that will seem to speak of the girl she was rather than of some general American female figure, although it could be argued that we can no longer speak with any accuracy of a specific person, that the specific person has evolved and given way to the general woman, distinguished primarily by her name.
The names defined here derive from a bank of easily pronounceable and typical slogans used to single out various female persons of America and beyond. A natural bias will be evident toward names that can be sounded with the mouth. The snap, clap, and wave, while useful and namelike in their effect (the woman or girl is alerted, warned, reminded, soothed), are generally of equal use against men, and therefore of little use here. Gestures of language that require no accompanying vocal pitch, such as gendered semaphore, used in the Salt Flats during the advent of womenâs silent television, or Womenâs Sign Language (WSL), developed in the â70s as a highly stylized but difficult offshoot of American Sign Language, now nearly obsolete because of the strenuous demands it placed upon the hips and hands, were never successful enough with my sister to warrant inclusion in the study. She plainly didnât respond to the various postures and physical attitudes we presented to herâour contortions and pantomime proved not theatrical enough to distract her into action. No shapes we made with our hands could convince her that there was important language to be had in our activity, and she often sat at the window, waiting for a spoken name, without which she could not begin the task of becoming herself.
This is certainly not to imply that communication between persons and living things requires tone or sound, or that deaf figures of the female communities can have no names. There is always written text, to be apprehended through visual or tactile means, as well as the German-American technique of âhandlingâ the name of a woman onto her thigh. My sister, as it happens, did not respond in any useful way to our repeated and varied handling of her body. As rough as we were, it made no apparent impression on her.
Here the American female name is regarded as a short, often brilliant word. Rarely should it inaccurately capture the person it targets, and its resistance to alternate uses, modifications, translations, and disruptions is an affirmation that individuals can and should be
entirely defined
by a sharp sound out of the mouthâthese definitions have simply yet to be
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