<html><body><P><FONT style="FONT-FAMILY: arial,helvetica,sans-serif" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size=2>I think it was Oscar Wilde who described Britain and America as two countries divided by the same language!</FONT></P>
<P><FONT style="FONT-FAMILY: arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Yes English a "</FONT><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Language of Wider Communication" and</FONT> whilst non-native speakers are in many ways put at a disadvantage through this, also native speakers are faced with the fact that much of the meanings which they are accustomed to being communicated in ordinary speech are lost in people the further away they are socially geographically and linguistically.</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P>So faced with this dual function of English as the language of our native idioms, and rooted in a culture which has thrived on word play in the face of racial oppression, theorised as "The Signifying Monkey". See <A href="http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/gates.htm">http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/gates.htm</A>) for a summary of these issues. Part of what emerges from this is a deliberate indeterminacy between the figurative and the literal. The Signifying Monkey is ""all metaphor, all ambiguous oracle," as Robert Pelton has said [in <I>The Trickster in West Africa</I>, 1980]. The most famous myth about him is read as a story about indeterminacy. [Gates refers to the myth of "The Two Friends," in which Esu [The Signifying Monkey] appears to two men wearing a cloth cap with one white side and one black side. The two friends fight over the 'correct' color of the cap, as each saw one side only.] Indeterminacy, then, is accounted for by the vernacular tradition, as an unavoidable aspect of acts of interpretation."</P>
<P>Esu is syncretised with Hermes: "Esu's most direct Western kinsman is Hermes. Just as Hermes' role as a messenger and interpreter for the gods lent his name readily to <I>hermeneutics</I>, our word for the study of methodological principles of interpretation of a text, so too is it appropriate for the literary critic to name the methodological principles of the interpretation of black texts <I>Esu-'tufunaalo</I>, literally "one who unravels the knots of Esu" [this word is a Yoruba neologism coined by the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka]. Esu is the indigenous black metaphor for the literary critic, and <I>Esu-'tufunaalo</I> is the study of methodological principles of interpretation itself, or what the literary critic does. <I>Esu-'tufunaalo</I> is the secular analogue of Ifa divination, the richly lyrical and densely metaphorical system of sacred interpretation that the Yoruba in Nigeria have consulted for centuries, and which they continue to consult. Whereas the god Ifa is the text of divine will, Esu is the text's interpreter (<I>Onitumo</I>), "the one who translates, who explains, or 'who loosens knowledge.'" [. . .] "</P>
<P>Unfortunately many people find this means of communicating disorientating. However as it embodies a way of thinking which has refused assimilation to the domination of capitalism, we are unwilling to give it up. Indeed as this manner of communicating has been engrained in us since childhood, it could well be the case that we are unable to abandon it. It is our experience of the English language. Even with the theoretical elucidation given above, often does not make matters clearer. However, faced with the tension between English as the language of capitalist domination and English as the language which facilitates communication between activists, <EM>Esu-'tufunaalo</EM> can perhaps be useful in making these contradictions more managable.</P>
<P>Fabian</P><br> <br><hr>Get email for your site ---> http://www.everyone.net<br></body></html>