LOM14

ACT 3

Scene 1 - Day of the big televised event. Meaning stands in front of a row of microphones and with camera lights flashing every few seconds he delivers the following monologue.

Meaning: You humans think you are special. (A gasp goes through the crowd followed by nervous laughter). And you are right! (Laughter). Language makes you special. But what if everything you thought you knew about language was wrong? (Silence). I am here to tell you that learning a langugae, any langugae, is actually very easy. See ... look at me, even a parrot can do it! The question you should ask yourselves though is this: Am I understanding what I'm saying or am I just delivering a long, memorized, scripted monologue?
(Murmurs)
What if language were easy? Well it is easy because you speak it without thinking, you even talk in your sleep. It hardly requires any effort. Only when you try to learn a new language does it seem very difficult, and that is the puzzling thing - how can something so easy be so hard? (Everyone is listening attentively now). That we don't know why should show us we still don't understand what language really is, and maybe it's important to figure it out. Because people today speak so many different languages and misunderstand each other so much, that it would truly be wonderful if people could learn to speak new languages really easily. Compare it to the days before aeroplanes were invented ... No one thought it possible for humans to fly.
(Here Meaning takes off in flight and circles around the room before again settling before the bank of microphones. Everyone is aghast and the camera's start flashing much faster, blinking like neon strobe lights).
Then someone figured out aerodynamics. And the built a plane. What if meaning is like aerodynamics. An unchartered area of knowledge ... something waiting to be discovered. And what if, if we discover the nature and working of meaning, it becomes possible to cross great distances in a far shorter time than would be possible if we were travelling on land, on horseback, or even with teh fastest car or train. What if, if we discovered the meaning of meaning, we could construct learning programs that make it possible, for instance, for adults to learn a new language in a few days? Wouldn't that be awesome? Maybe it's possible. Maybe not. But let us not kid ourselves that we have exhausted the meaning of meaning, because I believe that if we already had, such miracles would be possible.
I thank you for your attention.
Meaning bows slightly.