for thinking people
April 22, 2024
It’s been a while since I made a game. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, the previous effort was about a year ago, with The Clock Village. This time I thought to make something far simpler, so here’s Letteract, a card game with words. Like all my games and programs, it’s free and ad-free.
The setup and rules are very simple, as you will see. The program didn’t take more than two or three days to put together, and another few to polish some details.
May 11, 2020
Defamiliarization, as the word implies, is a process where something familiar is no longer perceived as such. Specifically in writing, defamiliarization in literature refers to a technique (a literary device, in a sense) where the writer offers familiar, common things in an odd, unorthodox way.
The purpose of defamiliarization is to cause the readers to question their perception of reality and, as a result, ultimately redefine it.
In a way, defamiliarization in literature is a destabilizing process. All such literary devices – see, for instance, my post on juxtaposition – enhance the readers’ perception of reality. Therefore, perhaps ironically, although defamiliarization causes you to initially question reality (the known and familiar), through this process it actually facilitates a much deeper and more comprehensive understanding of reality.
In this post we’ll take a closer (yet accessible) look at defamiliarization in literature, with examples and tips on how to use it properly – that is, packing as much symbolic meaning as possible in your text. Remember that literature is more than a sum of its parts, which means that a quality text should inspire more meanings than what its words allow.
October 25, 2019
Words are powerful, they can make or break situations big and small. From your Friday date to starting a war, the right (or wrong) words can be the difference between bliss and destruction. But have you ever wondered what’s the connection between language and context?
In other… words, words are powerful in unique ways, that go beyond the surface of things. Just look what I did at the beginning of this paragraph. Yet at the same time, language seems to rely on a wider context to operate efficiently.
Just to clarify, in this post I do not refer to linguistic but to sociocultural context. The issue is not whether the sentence “He did this to me, this way” says nothing without a context about “He”, “this”, “this way” (and even “did”).
Rather, the issue is whether words taken out of their context can have a seriously destabilizing effect. Take these sentences for example:
I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.
Fear defeats more people than any other thing in the world.
Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so you are insulting yourself.
You probably don’t see anything particularly wrong with them. Indeed, they probably come across as good advice, not unlike what you’d see as a quotation – complete, with a sunset sky or butterflies behind it.
I’ve got a little surprise for you, though…
