Language is limiting
Language is nothing if not limited. As a race, we can only express ourselves succinctly via spoken or written language (or violence be it murder or suicide). Yet the human race speaks an immense variety of languages and dialects, many indeed most of who are distinctively and entirely different from each other. Translation is bullshit. Language is also culture. The language you speak growing up is directly related to the immediate and broader cultural infrastructure in which you are shaped. I would argue that language goes as far as to shape our faces. A person growing up speaking English (any dialect) will use his or hers face muscles differently due to the pronunciation of a language than that say of someone growing up speaking Cantonese. Language is distinct to culture. Language is a means of sharing and expressing interpretations of our surroundings. Words arise due to a need. If time wasn’t linear, we wouldn’t need words like yesterday etc. Eskimos have something like seventeen different words for snow, all with distinctive different meanings. I bet they don’t (or didn’t originally...) have as many words for money as we do.
The actual words, and their meanings, are hence reflections of the collective societies within any given culture. This is true even within dialects of a language.
A skateboarder will have and use a different vocabulary than say a doctor. Although the overriding language may be the same, the various subcultures of a culture will inhabit expressions, words and combinations thereof that are distinct and different from each other. Simultaneously, the skateboarder in question could be a brother or sister of the doctor in question, so the definitions are hard to establish. Culture is constantly changing, and concurrently language. Perhaps language is precursor to cultural change at times. Anyway... the point is, language is culture. And if language is limiting then well… yeah.
We can only express that which our culture allows. This extends even to body language. This is not to say that no one can feel and experience things that can’t be shared or understood by their immediate culture and cultural heritage. It’s just that some things we find difficult to express and comprehend because our cultural framework has developed no means of doing so. Instead, the words we do have which refer to thought and moods (like melancholy) have become vague. My understanding of melancholy is different, if only slightly from yours. Because of this, we have a cultural pool of words intended to encompass the inexpressible. Melancholy is what people define it as. But if we have no other words to express feelings associated with ‘melancholy’, we can only define it as ‘melancholy’. Of course language wouldn’t work if everyone had their own individual vocabulary – the beauty of language is that it allows humans to function in a social and intellectually progressing fashion.
It has become the job of the arts to fill the gap between the spoken and the felt. There’s no singular way to interpret or appreciate (if at all) Presley’s ‘Jailhouse Rock’ for example. But I bet you that some people, of varying ages and race, will feel a swell of inexpressible emotions when listening to the track. Just as some people get when listening to Sgt. Pepper/Sisters of Mercy whatever.
I’m rambling, and I’m not even that wasted.
The actual words, and their meanings, are hence reflections of the collective societies within any given culture. This is true even within dialects of a language.
A skateboarder will have and use a different vocabulary than say a doctor. Although the overriding language may be the same, the various subcultures of a culture will inhabit expressions, words and combinations thereof that are distinct and different from each other. Simultaneously, the skateboarder in question could be a brother or sister of the doctor in question, so the definitions are hard to establish. Culture is constantly changing, and concurrently language. Perhaps language is precursor to cultural change at times. Anyway... the point is, language is culture. And if language is limiting then well… yeah.
We can only express that which our culture allows. This extends even to body language. This is not to say that no one can feel and experience things that can’t be shared or understood by their immediate culture and cultural heritage. It’s just that some things we find difficult to express and comprehend because our cultural framework has developed no means of doing so. Instead, the words we do have which refer to thought and moods (like melancholy) have become vague. My understanding of melancholy is different, if only slightly from yours. Because of this, we have a cultural pool of words intended to encompass the inexpressible. Melancholy is what people define it as. But if we have no other words to express feelings associated with ‘melancholy’, we can only define it as ‘melancholy’. Of course language wouldn’t work if everyone had their own individual vocabulary – the beauty of language is that it allows humans to function in a social and intellectually progressing fashion.
It has become the job of the arts to fill the gap between the spoken and the felt. There’s no singular way to interpret or appreciate (if at all) Presley’s ‘Jailhouse Rock’ for example. But I bet you that some people, of varying ages and race, will feel a swell of inexpressible emotions when listening to the track. Just as some people get when listening to Sgt. Pepper/Sisters of Mercy whatever.
I’m rambling, and I’m not even that wasted.
posted by tseuq at 7/02/2005 05:01:00 pm
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