Passing Thoughts on Cheeminology

CHEEMINOLOGY
A hybrid English-Hokkien word meaning that something is written in an intellectual or bombastic fashion, such that it is completely incomprehensible.
– Coxford Singlish Dictionary

The existence of the word chiminology as a word disturbs me. If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is in any way true, I think that its a good example which proves it. I asked some friends for the meaning, and from my impression I found the social meanings to be either “difficult” or “i don’t understand, please explain”.

In linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (SWH) states that there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it.
– wikipedia entry on Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

I ponder on the reason why there is a need to express such an idea in one word. Are there so many things that require clarification in the Singaporean realm of existence? Does the word define our experience as a person, that the availability and convenience of expression of such an idea of “i don’t know what you’re talking about” becomes an escape clause — lets change the subject — and a dismissal of creativity and ideas? If it takes a teasing dimension, then does it form a stigma on the expression of complex ideas, or at least convoluted sentences? The prevalence of truncation in Singlish or at least how English is spoken in Singapore is not strange : for instance “So how?” for “So how should we continue on in our project now that we’ve encountered this dilemma?” or “Go eat” for “Lets go have lunch now”. Could truncation also be a reflection of the necessity for simplicity?

Personally, when I hear the word “cheeminology” as a response, I get the impression that the speaker is not making an effort to understand my words. But probably that’s just me and my not-so-familiarity with Singaporean slang. That’s also what you get for somebody who write 5000-word blog entries *yay*

Wait, I ran out of passing thoughts. There it goes.

Part Two.

Passing Thoughts II — Cheeminology
High time I replied to some of these posts. But the reply is so long I might as well make it a post.

Anyway, its cheeminology because its the standard set by the Coxford Singlish dictionary. There’s no other body that claims authority, so thus.

For Shihan/Phishy7,

Let me explain myself.

This post came about when I was thinking about the word “cheeminology” and in retrospect how I got turned off by it. I admit, I like to play around with big ideas and sometimes I might throw big words around. The question here you’re putting here is blame: “Who are you to use such big words?” However, my (bourgeois and oh-so-uppity) question is, what is the meaning of the response of ‘cheeminology’ or ‘chim’?” or even the meaning of any kind of response at all — Do big words seem to turn off people in the regional context, or further, as a universal principle?

well, there seems to be a fundamental problem with that idea that “the fewer words, the more effective the transmission of ideas.” By using “big words” what the speaker is essentially doing is compressing many ideas into less words. If you say things simply, then ideas are left out. Let me take the following two sentences as example.

A: Heidegger’s phenomenological existentialism destroys Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology by the denial of the bracketing of psychological consciousness.

B: Heidegger’s philosophy says that you can’t separate the mind from sense-experience, while Husserl’s philosophy has that separation as its cornerstone.

What’s trying to be conveyed is the difference between Heidegger and Husserl’s philosophy. I’m deliberately choosing obscure philsophy to illustrate this point.

Sentence A has a lot of big words, while sentence B has relatively common words. What is the difference between saying A and saying B in terms of response? Lets say there are two kinds of responses: (1) an inquisitive response and (2) a turn-off response.

Therefore, if you say things simply, then ideas are left out. Even if we can put simplify sentence A in terms of sentence B, are we explaining all the nuances that all the meaning that is encapsulated in sentence A through sentence B? Of course not, by saying “bracketing of psychological consciousness” is not exactly “separating the mind from sense-experience” because there’s always the contextual richness that is left out in the latter, which is possessed in the former, and that’s not what we want. Both ways, I have to explain what Heidegger is trying to do, and his whole transcendental philosophy and why Heidegger says it cannot be.

Well if i can assume that’s not a personal attack, and if that the sapir-whorf hypothesis is true to some degree, then the existence of the word “cheeminology” or its derivatives would push any random person to move from response (1) to response (2) when confronted with Sentence A.

I guess its a linguistic experiment that has to be carried out empirically.

An associated question would any random person have a tendency to respond to the simple sentence B with inquisitive response (1) at all? or would they have simply gave response (2) anyway confronted with sentence A or B regardless of the language because of the abstract concepts involved? (simply said, if i said something simply, would it still be ‘cheem’?) — or am i contradicting myself? and if so, what makes it different?

At least I would personally say that I would say Sentence A to gauge the level of interest in a subject, while I would say Sentence B to explain something because sentence A makes me go, “What do you mean?” and sentence B makes me go “Okay… so what?”. Because of that distinction, I would say that both sentence are not completely the same because of different social intentions. It might not be the same for all people however, and that’s the whole point of this point — I want to know what does it make people “go”.

For John Riemann Soong,

No, I am not a linguistics student, but I dabble in linguistics as an amateur. All I ever do is read language log for all my linguistic needs. I’ve also took a basic linguistics module at university, but beyond that I have no formal training besides that of a social scientist.

Now I think I have structured the subject matter of “truncation” in a stream-of-consciousness mode rather than a formal argument. I will take into note the pro-drop phenomenon, and I think I had a smaller form of consciousness of it. My second language is Malay, and the copula is almost non-existent there.

But the real argument is, is the necessity for simplicity shaping the way English evolves in Singapore? This isn’t the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, but rather the reverse of it. Instead of language shaping society, it is the way society already is that is shaping language. (Well, its a bit more difficult asserting THAT if i use the wikipedia definition because the wikipedia says its a “grammatical category” that shapes “worldviews” and that’s not exactly what I’m saying here, but what-the-heck.) Then if so, is truncation a reflection of such a causal relationship?

I’m not asking if truncation happens, but WHY it happens.