I know I'm a little late to this, but I've been— uh, terribly scatter-brained and focused on other projects.
Certainly, I'll say that making a change to one's linguistic patterns can be astoundingly effective in understanding why we used the old patterns. No swearing for a week? We find ourselves using a small set of other words in the exact same way and conceptually changing nothing, and that is an important lesson. Prefacing opinions with "I feel that" brings out the way most people phrase their own opinions as empirical facts, and it can inspire one to look for more depth in one's own statements. You know, things like that. It does work. Whether it sticks is up to the individual.
Kurt Vonnegut goes on in Timequake about how he feels semicolons are unnecessary and how he never uses them. So I stopped. I made it a personal challenge that for a year, I'd not use a single semicolon in anything I typed, whether on IRC or into a text editor or anything. The results were stark and unimpeachable. I'd found a clarity of sentence that I didn't have previously because each one had to stand on its own. The experiment ran its course successfully; I picked the semicolon back up afterwards, but to be used sparingly and well. (I like to think that Vonnegut would approve of somebody learning from him and then past. Such arrogance of mine!)
If those methods be not proven, then take this anecdotal evidence into account. They've worked well enough for me.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-02 09:26 pm (UTC)Certainly, I'll say that making a change to one's linguistic patterns can be astoundingly effective in understanding why we used the old patterns. No swearing for a week? We find ourselves using a small set of other words in the exact same way and conceptually changing nothing, and that is an important lesson. Prefacing opinions with "I feel that" brings out the way most people phrase their own opinions as empirical facts, and it can inspire one to look for more depth in one's own statements. You know, things like that. It does work. Whether it sticks is up to the individual.
Kurt Vonnegut goes on in Timequake about how he feels semicolons are unnecessary and how he never uses them. So I stopped. I made it a personal challenge that for a year, I'd not use a single semicolon in anything I typed, whether on IRC or into a text editor or anything. The results were stark and unimpeachable. I'd found a clarity of sentence that I didn't have previously because each one had to stand on its own. The experiment ran its course successfully; I picked the semicolon back up afterwards, but to be used sparingly and well. (I like to think that Vonnegut would approve of somebody learning from him and then past. Such arrogance of mine!)
If those methods be not proven, then take this anecdotal evidence into account. They've worked well enough for me.