Language

Language, a tool used by humans for thousands of years, is closely interwoven with the mind and the items it is used to describe. Language, reality, and consciousness are all interrelated; people utilize language to describe reality, which is in turn perceived by consciousness. Humans use words to express their consciousness, feelings, and emotions. In addition, language is used by people to talk to each other, think thoughts, and make sense of things. Language, while powerful enough to bring to humans ‘reality’ which they might otherwise never see, also has the ability to trap and screen people from society and other people with whom they wish to converse and share their experiences. The expression “I can’t find the right word” is the most frequently met example of such language entrapment.

Kenneth Burke defines man as the “symbol-using animal,” saying that men use symbols to live. Because words are symbols, they represent and stand for objects, thoughts, and ideas by definition. This inherently means that the words are not what they represent; they are a representation of something, and never the thing itself. Taking this in, one realizes just how little of what we think we know comes from reality. The majority of our knowledge comes from words, whether they are words in books, words on the board, or words coming out of the teacher’s mouth. Most of the things humans know come from somewhere else, which inherently means that the reality being represented has been skewed and distorted to a certain extent. Words, no matter how descriptive and accurate, carry no substance with them; they are meaningless if no thought is given to them. However, the application of thought applies the mind’s own perceptions and biases, changing the reality, which the words originally represented, in the person’s own mind. Words are meaningless because we cannot sense them; whereas a flower we see and can touch and smell, a word is only visualized or heard, and interpreted by the mind, which creates an image from the interpretation, and only then given substance at the brain’s own whim. Burke states that to “see...the full implications [of this] is much like peering...into an ultimate abyss,” because the realization of how insubstantial words are brings the question of “What is meaning of words and knowledge?” To question the truthfulness of words is to question the validity of all our knowledge and our existence. After all, if the only way of expressing oneself is through words, and words do not represent anything, then how can reality be found? How can one believe what he hears or reads, when it might be nowhere close to how he interprets it?

The author next discusses the relationship between the verbal (words) and the nonverbal (what words describe). Words, on the one hand, are a link to the nonverbal; they help people express the nonverbal to others, share their experiences, and recall the nonverbal by using the verbal to describe it. At the same time, the verbal serves to screen people from the nonverbal, for a number of reasons. First, a limited vocabulary may limit one’s ability to express himself; thus, the words coming out of his mouth would not be truly representing reality because he cannot find the correct words to describe it. This kind of language trap is found in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where Huck often finds that he is unable to put together the right words to express his emotions. In addition, the receiving party may interpret the words differently from how they were originally intended. When taken out of context, certain phrases may have very different meanings; in addition, the other side may misinterpret something due to lack of knowledge or simply ignorance. More importantly, words inherently distort reality, because when one puts things into words, a conversion from a real object into a symbol is made. By nature, a conversion cannot occur without some loss of efficiency. Whether it is the transfer of energy, the conversion from solid to liquid, the saving of an image into a different file format, or the transfer of the nonverbal into the verbal, some information, some dimension, is ultimately lost in the process. In addition, a highly detailed verbal account can convey very little information, as the example of the map (provided by Burke) shows. In the next paragraph, the author talks about how words, from the outset, describe “what they are not” (a rather ironic paradox), because words can never be the object they try to represent. While words are nothingness, they describe substantial objects.

The next idea the author discusses is even more troubling then the one considered earlier. When humans talk, who is doing the talking? Do words come out because we want them to, or do they come out on their own? The thought of having no control over what one is saying is enough to make anyone shudder. However, the idea is not as far-fetched as might seem at first sight. People’s thoughts, derived from the verbal, control them; everything that humans learn through the verbal from somewhere or someone else inadvertently affects them. Though one might not realize it, if he hears about someone else’s car being stolen and never found again, the story might drive him to call his dealership and order a high-tech security system for his own car. Experiences, books, news, TV ads, radio commentaries, and more pile up in every persons’ mind every day and influence how they think, act, and what they say without their realization.

The total impact of all the aforementioned ideas does not come immediately; at first, they seem distant, far-away, and just too crazy to be considered. After a while, it hits the reader (as well as the writer): words are nothing more than symbols, codes that the human mind interprets and around which it paints images. They connect humans to other people and at the same time confine people to their limits. They control individuals subconsciously, who give very little thought to their consequences. All the reader is left with is a scary feeling of fear, fear of not knowing and not understanding. One can go crazy just thinking about it.