Way back towards the end of unit one, we talked about the difference between the overt meaning of words. What we called the semantic meaning and the covert meaning, what we called the pragmatic meaning. In that context we were talking about Enron's code of ethics, as you'll recall. We noted that there seem to be a huge discrepancy between what the codes specify, for example a code for honesty and what people are actually doing, that is, committing criminal fraud. We speculated about what the covert meaning of the court of ethics might be given that it wasn't an accurate representation of the reality. Here, the likely interpretation is that it was a desire to conform to the standards of other corporations and to call positive feelings towards the Enron company. This last possibility especially suggests the potential symbolic importance of words. They can function as condensation symbols. And this brings me to an important point about teams. Words can be hugely important motivators. We're all familiar with great speeches that get people charged up. These are often depicted in movies. One of my favorites is an entirely fictional one. It is from the movie version of The Lord of the Rings. For those of you familiar with the movie, it is from the third part of the trilogy. The one entitled, The Return of the King. It's Aragon speaking to his men before the black gate of the Dark Lord Sauron, just prior to the culminating epic battle scene. You can easily find it on the Internet. Just type in, Lord of the Rings followed by the words, but it is not this day. But it is not this day, is the famous line. In fact you can just type that into the search engine and you'll find video clips of Aragorn's speech. Aragorn is riding in front of his lines of men. The odds are overwhelming that they will be crashed by the forces of the Dark Lord, who are assembling in the background. Aragorn tells them to hold their ground. He refers to the men as, my brothers, and he says, I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. So he empathizes with them, but then he delivers the motivational part. Now, I'm not an actor, certainly no Viggo Mortensen. So you'll have to watch the original to get the full effect. But it goes something like this. And I'll try a little bit to be an actor here, I'll ham it up. Gotta imagine him riding here in front of his men who are looking terrified. He's on his horse, he's carrying a sword, he's in armor. He says, a day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight. By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West. I think you can probably appreciate, especially if you look at the actual movie clip, not just my rendition of it, that it's not just the overt meaning of these words that is important. It's how they are delivered. How they are organized. The tone of voice. In fact, there's a little rise in the intonation there if you listen carefully. They're actually a form of poetry. I tried to diagram the poetry here. You'll see that there are really two parts plus a coda. The two parts are what we call parallel, they resemble each other. It's a form of parallelism. Important they both contain the key line, but it is not this day. That's the one everyone remembers. And that's why you can search for it on the Internet. Notice also the connection between the line and the one immediately after it. This day we fight! It is if you were waiting for that line, and it's a transformation of the earlier line, but it is not this day. This day we fight! And there it is. It comes at you. If we had more time, we could do a more detailed analysis, but there's still plenty left to talk about in this class. I will mention though, that this kind of organization of motivational political speech, in terms of parallelism, rising intonation, tone of voice, and so forth, is quite common in motivational speeches. It is in large part what makes a speech as condensation symbol work. It makes it capable of calling our emotions, calling them up. I actually remember something like it when I was a young kid. There was an old movie, it was even old back at that time. I saw it on television about Knute Rockne. He was a famous football coach for the Notre Dame football team. What I remember about it was the coach's speech in the locker room, and that's really probably all I remember about the movie. It's kind of same kind of poetry we've been seeing in the case of Aragorn's speech before the black gate. The coach tells them, and I'll just give you the little snippet that's in my memory, I've never bothered to look it up. We're going to run inside ' and outside ' inside ' and outside '. And when we get them on the run, where going to keep ' on the run. That's the emotional power of the words as symbol. I think you'll see it shares some poetic properties with Aragorn's speech. I even remember those words more than five decades later.
