Dogolinguistics

Maybe someone who knows more about psychology can help me. I studied psycho-linguistics pretty intensely as an undergraduate, so my concept of thought and speech is driven by de Saussure and his notions of the signifier and the signified. To put it ridiculously simply, there is the thing itself and there is the word that signifies it. Our brains latch on to this in thought and in speech. To different degrees, of course, most of us see an image in our head when we read or hear, for example, the word "castle."

As a generally binary machine, when it comes to language, the brain works, linguistically, in comparison and contrast. If we see a thing run across the road in front of our car at dusk, we immediately compare it to everything we know it is not, until we reach a  conclusion: it must have been a deer, because it was not a dog or a rabbit or a ketchup bottle, based on comparisons of size and everything else. This, of course, happens in a fleeting second. (Though, I swear, one time a gorilla ran across interstate 95 in front of me as I drove in for a Phillies game.)

Thinking in Harmony -- a Different Kind of ADD?

I once mentioned, in a discussion with my wife and some friends, that the environment in my head is pretty crowded -- like a bunch of conversations going on all at once. This is true, except when I am listening to or composing music -- or even when I am playing. Otherwise, the old attic is full of people and they are chattering away.

When I said this about the "conversations," my wife said that this is a prime symptom of ADD. I disagreed with her diagnosis and began questioning how I could have achieved what modest academic, professional and artistic successes I have if I am an un-diagnosed sufferer of that learning disability (which, as you know, prevents focus in thinking -- or, at least, clouds focus).

Yesterday, I was taking a class on learning disabilities and we were discussing the various types of cognitive malfunctions and, as always, I found myself "hearing" several conversations at once: 1) one about my own childrens' learning styles by comparison; 2) one about students in my own school and how our program for "special education" works; 3) one about the content I was supposed to retain by the end of the class about documentation for learning disabilities; 4) one about the line between not discriminating against those with disabilities and overburdening schools 5) one about this blog post -- the workings of my own possibly learning-disabled mind; 6) one about my strategies for accomplishing my tasks for the rest of the day; 7) one about an idea for a composition that I have; 8) one about...well, you get the point.