Two Languages, Two Conversations

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I recently began to pursue graduate education at a large and famous law school, an environment far removed from the close-knit community of my undergraduate college. Differences of all sorts abound between the two schools. Song, poetry, and competitive board games are far less common here, while the chance of meeting a classmate who speaks English as a second (or fourth) language has skyrocketed. In one interesting and important way, the schools are quite alike: The vast majority of students enjoy talking about ideas. Both schools purport to teach their students principles vital to the proper ordering of human lives, and such principles call for probing discussion. Despite this common desire to discuss ideas, the two schools foster dramatically different conversations amongst their students. As this semester passes, I have become increasingly convinced that this can be traced to the different vocabularies in common use at each school. The differences in word choice are so great as to constitute two different languages. Continue reading