(Something) -----------> Which-finder Specific vs. General Whatkindof.

       “he met with the Devill, and cheated him of his Booke, wherein were written all the Witches names in England, and if he looks on any Witch, he can tell by her countenance what she is.”
― Matthew Hopkins, The Discovery of Witches and Witchcraft: The Writings of the Witchfinders

        

The Whichfinder specific: MACA*

      
     Matthew Hopkins the famous hunter of witches in 17th century England was, like all of his kind, very sure of his own ideas. He knew what he was looking for and had the necessary methods to achieve his goal. In his own specific way, he was doing what any of us do generally. For, at the most basic level, we must all deal with information to arrive at our ideas.
    The most basic way our brains organise  information  is like this**  (Whether ye be Matthew Hopkins, Mary Hopkin, or a Hopi.):
             

The capstone of Bela Lugosi's pyramid is also its foundation...**

         So, once you know what something is, the information will basically then be further sorted by two paths: The question: Which (thing)? and the question What kind of (thing)?
{Where (thing) has been defined by the first question: What is (it)?}       All of this is more difficult to describe and explain than to actually do. In fact, native speakers tend to sort this information automatically, which is one reason why it is not formally taught to people. It is, however, the foundation upon which all other information rests, so it is a good idea to let people know what is going on in terms of the sorting of the most basic information. Thus we should take note of The Whichfinder Specific and General Whatkindof.

General Whatkindov. Is he big or small? Russian or Prussian? Does he have a pickelhaube? A Mitre? Does he have a fake moustache or a real one? Can his name really be Helmuth?

.

           Even if you operate in the straight-forward world of gibbets, giblets and gore, your mission will benefit from extra information. Which (witch)? and What kind of (witch)? {for one may be wasting one's time on a low-level witch when the Queen of witches is using her broomstick to make a clean getaway.+}
For those of us not dealing with the simple minded world of stakes, faggots and ducking-stools, we have to employ these basic questions to have a better idea of what we are talking about.

    For example:               (something) -------------> (a hat)


                                     Which (hat)? -------------> (this hat)

                             What kind of (hat)? ------> (a big hat)
                                                                               or
                                                                         (a cloth hat)
                                                                              or
                                                                           (a mitre)
                                                                             or
                                                                         (a cap)***

                          

     On an important note (especially for Tesol in Japan), any idea of Which....? or What kind of....? is itself, most basically, something. Thus, like articles, information such as: my, your, her or this, that or big, cloth, are part of the information or idea of something, and not separate from it.
Why then, do text-books neither present language like this, nor bother to explain that this is how it most basically works?
Unless I'm wrong and all of this is a rubbish idea?

        If we know what something is, we then want to know which (thing) or what kind of (thing) it is.
                    Remarkably, our brains do this automatically without our paying that much attention to the process. Consider the following information:

                                       The dog saw the cat.

              and                   The gee saw the gaw
                                  
  Naturally, we would pause and ask: "What is a gee?" "What is a gaw?"

                The point is that we do the same with the first sentence without noticing we are doing it. Within our brain, we ask "what is a dog"? and because we can connect it to other ideas/information we can understand it. In fact, understanding anything, involves a web of connections that we have simpistically reduced to the concept of "meaning". It might be illustrated like this:

No wonder communication can be difficult...#

           Most basically, if we can attach information to an idea then that is the basic step of understanding. If we can not attach information to idea then we don't understand, and then, if we want to improve the communication we must ask questions.

               As a language student is bound to be faced with information that they can not attach to an idea, it is remarkable that there is generally no basic training in Tesol in particular, and education in general, in those questions that constitute Bela Lugosi's pyramid. It's almost as though people are being trained not to understand things...
               

               It is, I think, a better idea to acknowledge that the Wachowski's after all were right: we live in the matrix. Although happily, this one doesn't necessarily involve existing in a womb of artificial amniotic fluid with a tube in the back of your neck.++ This one consists of information, which is basically the only thing there is. We cut our way through the forest of information by putting things, everything, into the basic categories suggested by questions and from all of this follow ideas.

              Questions, then, are vital to understanding above a basic animal level, necessary to plot our way through the matrix.
            Which is exactly why questions (asking and checking) play so little part in traditional education as it makes it easier to control people. Consequently, in Tesol specifically, the importance of the most basic of questions is not recognised (Quite apart from the fact that, in Japan, the idea of which....? amongst both students and teachers is like this:
                                 Information------------------------------------> Idea

                                  Which...?    ----------------------------------> A or B

                     What this entails is that students can only connect a which question with the idea of a choice between two things. So that people are stuck in a pit of gloom dealing with some bourgeois zombie asking only: Which do you prefer, tea or coffee? when they could be climbing their own mountain of enlightenment, and the sights you can see from there. For we live our entire lives in the double embrace of the Which-finder Specific and General Whatkindov. It may be a good idea to acknowledge it.

                   And in relation to education generally, and its very specific idea of how things work, consider the reverence in which the competitive spelling bee is held. An event which basically encourages young minds to remember words that they will almost never use or hear or read.  Odd when you think about it, isn't it? Especially when there are no D+E bees or Bela Lugosi bees.
                   But there it is, general education ignores the basic structure of communication and concentrates only on the warts, so specifically, Tesol follows too. Grinning and giggling as it helps to tie the victim to the stake. No questions asked.

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* Making ambivalence clear(er) again (and always.)

**  ...(also looks like a witches hat...). Startlingly enough, the English textbook for beginners that I have mentioned before contains the following dialogue:
                                     
                                                  Ken: "Is that a hat?"
                                                 Mary: "No, it isn't. It is a cap."

   Let's be clear, within the context of head gear, A cap IS a hat. Also, I doubt very much that this conversation has ever taken place between two human beings, which makes it somewhat less than ideal for an example for beginners, I think. Moreover, as a cap (キャップ) is a hat (帽子)　in Japanese also, then the reason for using this bizarre exchange as an example becomes even more obscure.

*** A cap! A kind of hat!                                                    
+Aythangyew


++ Or does it?
# By the way, does this look like iron filings on paper over a magnet to you? If communication is, basically, the only thing that ever happens, then it is reasonable to presume that, on a most basic level, things will resemble other things. Communication might be thought of as a Vector Field, or as Schrodinger's Hat, where the idea hangs indeterminately until we decide what it is.##
##From this, we can observe that first of all, communication requires agreement with oneself, and then agreement with others. Overall, agreement with the universe will be generally helpful: I am Superman, watch me jump off this building. I'm cold, boiling water will make me warmer. The basic history and success of the United States, built on the ideas of the Enlightenment and science, strongly suggests that Donald Trump will continue that fine tradition.