Chris Phillibert "Do You Speak English?" (3)

I do indeed! Quite well, I think. I've spoken it my whole life and though I have incorporated various slang words, abbreviations and contortions of words on my expression of the language, I think I have a pretty firm grasp of the language at its core. I really enjoyed the second part of this question involving Anderson and his stance on language and literacy imagining a nation. It forced me to think back to the first question asking, "What is a nation?" which I liked a lot. Anderson believes that the idea of a nation is something that derives from man and that nations are formed by the people united by a common language or print literature. This question got me thinking about what other things in a person's daily life are constructed by people or the general community around them but we obey them as if they exist as rules outside of our own minds. In other words what other things seem as solid and unmovable as nations, but only exist as concepts we all agree upon in our minds. That got me to thinking about time and how as an international community everyone in the world across languages and cultures agrees that a second is the base for counting standard everyday time and that time should be measured in seconds, minutes, hours and the like. Ultimately I started wondering how people collectively came to agree upon that for time and how it might be harder or even easier to get people to agree unilaterally on an idea on an international scale nowadays. Currency, too, is another example of something, credit, debt, etc, that exists only in our collective minds but can have impact on tangible things like transactions and the like. I feel as if I'm digressing a lot here so I'll get back to point.

Anderson backs his idea of nations being formed around common literature and language by citing the example of European nations forming around their languages and different languages like English, Spanish, French, and others could be all formed from Latin and coexist in relatively close geographic areas. Anderson pushes the idea that there were just as many languages as there were nations and that shows that the building of nations is related to the formation of languages. Anderson also stresses that the ideas of nationalism and nationality are formed through what he refers to as "imagined political communities." Nations are deeply intertwined with these political communities and the expansion of nationalism is related to one's nationality, but is not quite the same.

Another thing I got to thinking about when considering this question is who controls what ideas are considered for adaptation or refusal in the public forum of a community? Whether that community is on an international scale as when it comes to time, a national scale as when it comes to currency, or a classroom scale when it comes to the name of a blog, there is a method of mediating which ideas are and are not brought up for discussion. The immediate answer that comes to mind for me is whatever presiding authority exists over the domain gets to decide what is discussed in that forum. The question from that becomes, what or whom is the authority when it comes to an international scale? Is there really any authority at all? I think when it comes to an international scale it depends on who you pay attention to. Whether you pay attention to international news or forum sites that get contributions from around the world, you will have ideas and concepts thrown at you on an international scale. I guess in reality, you're the only authority to what you consider in a public forum and collectively as a community with everyone making the decision to accept or refute something, a decision gets made. Sorry for the rambling!