On Wednesday we began to delve into language more deeply. We began to question not so much the mechanics of language–we didn't diagram sentences, we didn't separate words into nouns, verbs, or adjectives–but rather the nature of language. For me, I have always subscribed to the theory that language is asymptotic. I think this partly because of my schooling, and also partly because that is how our culture has taught us to think.
Think about it: in our Post-Modern society, we are taught certain values, traditions, and morals by our parents, the media, our culture, and our teachers. However, they also teach us to value what other people value as well. We are taught that there is no strictly wrong or strictly right, that all truth is relative. Ours is a culture characterized not by solidarity, but diversity. Schools now pride themselves on the different amount of backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities they have, and teach us that each person can follow their own set of beliefs. You like to pray to God? Great. You don't believe in God? Also great. Democrat? Republican? White? Black? Whatever? All are great. We celebrate you. And you. And Whoever, even though they are different.
My point is that while each of us are taught to tolerate, we also want to go further than that. Our generation has such a thirst for knowledge that we have this compelling need to understand everything. A disturbing statistic shows that today you can find more information in an issue of the New York Times then were likely to in your entire lifetime if you lived during the 19th century. Whether this has been brought on by innovations such as the internet, or better educational systems, or something else entirely is not the point. the point is that everyone today cannot stand not knowing. It is this thirst that I believe has driven us delve more deeply into history, into music, and into literature more than ever.
I don't know about you though, but each of these things are frustratingly tantalizing. This is made all the more frustrating in my revelation that language is so asymptotic. Because we all formulate our own realities, our own lens, stepping out of ours into another, completely different world has become extremely difficult. And by characterizing language as being asymptotic, I go the extra step and say that it is impossible. Their are only two ways to truly connect with people: either by shared experiences–walking in someone's shoes–or through communication.
However, another school I subscribe to is deconstructionism. By this I mean that I feel that language is broken. I argue that because language is so broken, so inadequate, that truly connecting to someone through language is broken. As I said earlier, we all have so many different values, traditions, and morals, and have experienced so many different events, that each word we use has a different meaning. While we have agreed on authorities like dictionaries to define terms universally, all of the connotations that go with each word are going to be slightly different unless two people have shared the exact same experiences. Even then words may not mean the same, because so much is dependent on how we react to things internally.
In the short story Slim, the narrator tells is his story in hope of connecting with us on a personal level by trying to bring us into his shoes: we see his angst and pain through his lens. But while we all read the same thing, we only get an impression of what it is like to live with AIDS, and even then we all get different impressions, which is apparent when we discuss it. Like it says in the essay "Terministic Screens":
"Our point is: All three terminologies (Watson's, Bowlby's, Augustine's) directed the attention differently, and this led to a correspondingly different quality of observations. In brief, 'behavior isn't something that you need but observe; even something so 'objectively there' as behavior must be observed through one or another kind or terministic screen, that directs the attention in keeping with its nature" (p. 49 Burke).
It is for this reason that I say that language is just as much a barrier as it is a bridge. We may keep getting closer and closer to each other by sharing our experiences, by never can really intersect. And it is at intersections that you and I can finally understand each other completely.
16 comments:
Ryan, you've left us with a very thoughtful and engageing reflection, one that I will continue to ponder over the weekend and probably throughout our time together as a class (if not longer ...). One of the problems that I'm glad you identified was the issue of relativism, whether cultural or linguistic, or even cultural-linguistic. As if the terms can really be separated?
I wonder if it's helpful to think beyond the Post-Modern condidtion here a bit. It seems to me, our world is full of values, and not everyone has come to the place of tolerating everyone else's version of the truth equally. In ways, we might even say there's been a backlash against such tolerance. (Consider the intensity of debates about gay marriare or even the ongoing criticisms of phenomenena like global warming.) In many ways, belief--of the value-laden and non-rational kind--predominates much of our discourse. Language may be broken (and I think I tend to agree with such deconstructionist theories in some ways), but we still use it, and Burke makes me wonder if we've really entered a meta-linguistic era of intense belief, an era where it's not just enough to know the info, or have the opinion, or feel the belief, but to know how to organize it, find it, critique, rhetorically situate it so that we understand our writing and textual creations (and others) in relation to the overwhelming abundance of discourse that we face everyday.
Just my thoughts this morning ... I'd be curious what others think about Ryan's post.
(On a side note--I find your use of the term asymptotic interesting. To be honest, I had to look it up in the dictionary, and I'm curious what you mean by it. I understand it as a mathematical term, having to do in a functional sense with approaching a value but also tending to infinity. I wonder how you relate this to your thoughtful reflections on the nature of language?)
I really enjoyed what Ryan had to say about how we can't connect to people simply with language because it has a different meaning for all of us. I think he's on to something. Different words can and do have many different connotations to many different people and these different interpretations can certainly inhibit us from making that personal connection to someone else. It takes that shared experience to truly have a connection with someone and for them to truly understand where you are coming from. I would almost take this a step farther and say that we can only grasp a complete understanding of the experience if we shared it with that person. In a sense, there seem to be 3 levels of understanding. On the first level, you can discuss the experience, but because you have not had the experience, you will not be able to relate to it or completely understand what it was like what the connotations of the words mean that your friend is using. On the second level, you may have had a similar experience and can therefore grasp a better understanding of the situation. You begin to understand the connotations of their words, but it can go no deeper than that. Finally, on the third level is when you have shared the experience with someone. Even though you might have two separate views of what happened, you will come the closest to understanding completely the connotations of your friend's words and the experience that they are trying to express.
In essence, the first level appears to me to be equal with sympathy, the third level represents empathy, and the second level is somewhere in between. Ryan's discussion brings to light a lot of facets about language that I had never thought about before. Its interesting to think about the words we use and how language indeed really could be broken because each word has so many meanings and we can't understand all of them without experiencing the situation from which each connotation comes.
Bridges, barriers and intersections – it almost like language is a poorly made road we are all trying to navigate with little effect. Perhaps, and I’ll be bold, this is a good thing. What is the benefit, the accomplishment gained by understanding someone completely? I would tend to say the gift for total understanding would be boredom.
The differences between peoples, their own attitudes and opinions, their distinctive connotations of language – this is what makes life interesting. Life would be nothing if we, as humans, understood everything. Nothing would be left to do. The unknown, the misunderstood, the tension between differences of meaning are all the things that drive us to passion. These are the events that allow conversation to take place. When two people talk of each other, when they engage in those three levels of understanding, they are not seeking out some intangible and lofty merging of minds. A person talks to better understand herself, to know her own thoughts and to compare them to the ideas of others. I agree that we, particularly this generation, are obsessed with information and with knowledge. Because of that, I worry what would happen if I succeeded to know someone totally. The people I spend time with are people who are interesting, people I learn from. If I knew them to the extent we have been discussing I wouldn’t be interested in them any more and I wouldn’t learn from them. Would I still desire to be around them?
If we sought total understanding, we would risk success. The price of that, I believe, would be terrible. Language certainly is broken in the sense we have described but rather than trying to transcend that fault, I think we should celebrate it.
Ryan: I believe your comparison of language to a mathematical asymptote is brilliant. I absolutely love the idea of complete understanding as a limit… the idea of racing toward a given number—in this case, full understanding—and drawing infinitely close to the ultimate goal but never actually attaining it.
In mathematics, the asymptote and the limit are all-important concepts; in fact, the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus is built on these two ideas, among other things. This, I think, is a critical thing to note: though some may consider the limit or an asymptote as “frustratingly tantalizing” in that it initially appears unattainable, mathematicians have been using them for centuries to carefully build the entire realm of calculus. The “impossible” may not be nearly so discouraging as one might imagine.
I have to side with Travis on this one: the brokenness of language is, in my opinion, far more of an advantage than a disadvantage. After all, wouldn’t Mark Doty’s Atlantis altogether lose its beauty if we could fully grasp the meaning and purpose of every word or image? The subtle mystery of the text would vanish. Just as mathematicians harnessed the unexpected power of the limit, I am confident that we, too, can employ a broken language to carefully construct masterpieces in communication.
I agree with the fact that language, because it’s relative to culture and personal experience, is never going to be a medium through which we can communicate perfectly. However, I think that we are being too critical of language and not giving it enough credit for all that it does do for us. Although language is not a flawless means for making our own experiences felt by others, it is phenomenal in what it does do. After all, as a result of being the only species on the planet capable of communicating through language, we are infinitely more advanced than any other life form. Two foxes can both watch the same sunrise, thus sharing the same experience, but they can’t look at each other and express those emotions of awe with words. As true as the saying is that “sometimes words are not enough”, it is also true that sometimes words are all there is for us to describe an experience.
It is only through the written word that we know about what is going on in Kenya, in Iraq, and the decline of our own nation’s economy. It is only through language that we can begin to comprehend what it would be like to be living with AIDS like Mark Doty. It would be wonderful if we could share every person’s experiences with them, thus knowing exactly what their words meant. Yet this is simply impossible. I think we should acknowledge the fact that language is relative to each individual, but at the same time admire it for what it has done to connect the world.
Wow…what a great topic for discussion! I agree that complete communication or complete understanding of another person or their experience is impossible (and not necessarily desirable). Going back to Susan Sontag, I think language could be viewed as a destructive force – we’ve talked about how metaphor and the ways in which we talk about illness (ex: “terminal” vs. “life-threatening”) can be emotionally damaging to people who live with an illness, and create unfortunate stereotypes or connotations. I wonder if we could take this a step further and say that even when we have good intentions in our talk, we simply create further barriers between the “reality” (a contestable term in itself), and the way we perceive the “reality." In this class, for example, I think we’ve established certain ways of thinking and talking about illness that are “right,” creating a kind of moral code that we all adhere to. I am not saying this is a bad thing (certainly not!), but I wonder if our ways of talking can in any way reflect what it is really like to live with HIV/AIDS or cancer? I tend to think that someone (though not everyone) with one of these illnesses could resent the terms we use to discuss their illness simply because our talk cannot reflect what they have actually experienced.
Hmm…I just thought of another way to look at this: maybe language and communication actually render moral relativism impossible, since we are all accountable to one another for the things we say?
The notion of language being asymptotic is quite convincing, the meaning of each word is truly dependent upon the experiences undergone by the individual saying it. I’m sure that most students in our class can say the word “war” and understand it as positive or negative, beneficial or detrimental, worthless or necessary. Still others will see the word “war” by how family members who have lived through it or served time fighting portray it. But as far as I know, no student in our class has had to endure “war”. This one, three-letter word can be construed in so many directions with endless connotations. Realizing this fact makes me wonder whether it is just our own English language that leaves so much up to personal defining. In Arabic we are constantly learning how vast and specific the vocabulary is. While in our own language we use one word to express the idea of “having”, in Arabic there are three ways of saying “have”. “ل” means to have, but it is not yours (as in a homeland), “مع” means to have with you (money in your pocket), and “عند” means having as in ownership or possession (a car at home). All three share the literal meaning of “have”, but each express very different ideas. There are many examples of this in Arabic, another being the eight different ways of saying the word cousin, depending on the gender of the person, which side the family they are on, etc. Specification is crucial in this language; there is a single word for most every idea. Does this remove some of the relativity of language? Are people more likely to share and understand something in the same way when the vocabulary allows for more distinction and description?
The issue of cultural linguistic relativism is very contentious. I would like to keep this rather brief, but there is one instance that is very relevant and probably so for the rest of time. Prior to the United States' dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Administration threatened the Japanese with the bomb. Their response was Mokusatsu, a cultural term that can be taken two ways. The first way is that it can be taken as contemptuous silence or to kill with silence. However the second, meaning a more Japanese cultural version is, "we need more time". Everyone knows the results, but few people know that as the bomb was dropped, the Japanese were trying to surrender to the Soviets.
In high school, I took a rather watered down version of AP Human Geography (which I suppose was a watered down version of a foundations course in anthropology). I guess you can say that whatever I took, it was of some incredibly diluted substance.
Anyway, this class was full of freshman, a result of the Highlands Ranch schools push to implement the AP program throughout high school, no doubt a feeble attempt to contend with the IB program at Douglas County High School. Interestingly enough, I was sufficiently outraged (not to mention aloof) that there were freshman in my AP course, and thusly adopted a rather unbecoming holier-than-thou attitude towards the entire subject. No doubt I was the joy of the class.
It's not surprising that I only recall a few details from my (extremely) selective perusing of the text. One of these involved the nature of language, and that would be its complete subjectivity. To me, this is what makes the study of language fascinating. Even when language is reduced to bare bones etymology, we can rarely assume that it has universal connotations. It is with this knowledge that we must write for those outside of our group of peers, or even for those who are simply not us (meaning, not me). Language is a tool and a resource, and it can be used just as easily as it can be abused.
(Also, I love the term asymptotic.)
There have been many moments in my life where I have been at a loss for words.
Moments where I wanted to console someone, but couldn't find the right word with which to start.
Moments where I wanted, so badly, to say a witty comeback, but couldn't seem to pick out the right remark.
Moments where I wanted to tell someone how happy I was, but saying that I was elated/ excited/ happy/ ecstatic/ overjoyed just didn't quite describe it.
Until I read this post, I thought I literally couldn't find the words. There had been times when I had been convinced that I was slowly losing my mind (and ultimately, my vocabulary...). I eventually chalked up my stuttering to an overflow of whatever emotion I was currently
experiencing. However, I think I might have been wrong.
Ryan explained asymptotes and limits in terms of vocabulary and rhetoric. What if I had passed the point of description? What if I had reached my limit of transferring thoughts into words, and now I had a "No Solution" flashing back at me on my Mental TI-84 calculator.
Having an "asymptote" on my vocabulary isn't so bad (well, except for the stuttering that seems to accompany it every now and then). What I feel is what I feel. It is mine. I can show my inner emotions, but I can't give them entirely to someone else. And all is right with this.
Language allows us to communicate. That is fantastic. It puts everyone on level playing ground to some extent. But there are always the areas that are a little secretive: what the person speaking truly means, and what the person hearing is interpreting.
Words remind us that we have this little secret area. This is our little asysmptote. We can never reach it, but we know it is there.
Having a level playing field is great, but it is only great if we know that our asysmptote exists somewhere close by.
Language and words are considered objective in our world. They have dictionary definitions that explain what each means. But, speech is so much more than that. How is it possible to put into words the depth of what one feels? It isn't always. An interesting passage in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying discusses the ambiguity of words:
"That was when I learned that words are no good; that words don't ever fit even what they are trying to say...motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it, because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who had never had the pride."
This passage is an interesting illustration of the ways in which words fail us. On the other hand however, most times words are close enough to the truth to convey one’s point. This ability to communicate is central to human knowledge. People are always searching for understanding and truth. And the mystery of feeling and what an individual cannot verbally portray fits into this quest nicely. It always leaves a frontier left to be discovered and explored.
I would like to answer your question, Professor Bateman:
'On a side note--I find your use of the term asymptotic interesting. To be honest, I had to look it up in the dictionary, and I'm curious what you mean by it. I understand it as a mathematical term, having to do in a functional sense with approaching a value but also tending to infinity. I wonder how you relate this to your thoughtful reflections on the nature of language?'
This connotation of the term was actually shown to me by my high school AP English teacher. The connotation stuck. He originally discussed this with us as we read Wide Sargasso Sea and Borderlands: the New Mestiza. These works deal a lot with people trying to make connections with people. In Wide Sargasso Sea, we see the author trying to make the argument for Bertha Rochester was abused by her people and by her husband, and this is what truly caused her insanity. Essentially, the author is trying to bridge the gap between Bertha and us created by the original events told in Jane Eyre. In Borderlands, Gloria Anzaldua does a great job of identifying the the cultural barriers set up by the white and chicano cultures, and gender barriers set up by the men and women of the chicano culture. Here, Anzaldua says that often the barriers are linguistic.
In both of these books, the authors have recognized the bridges that language creates--it forms our perceptions of ,and reactions to, situations. But by creating these bridges, the authors seem to note, barriers are created along side of them. Therefore, the more we try to connect by building linguistic barriers, the closer we get, but at the same time the more barriers we create. We can always keep getting closer, then, just as a curve line keeps getting closer to an asymptote, but with all of these barriers with defining things, we can never quite capture the true form.
In a poem called "the Alter" by a contemporary of John Donne, the writer talks about how the term God is insufficient to describe God, because of its complexity. Here, the term asymptotic can apply because no matter how hard we try to define God, we can't quite do it because of the infinite layers of emotional, spiritual, intellectual, intra-personal, and divine
feelings and connections that are associated with God.
Sorry for the roundabout explanation, but it is a complex connotation of asymptotic.
Ryan, there is without a doubt a barrier that even language cannot break in relating our experiences thoughts and emotions. You've given me much to ponder (like pooh) along with the other bloggers. Communication has been the gift of mankind since our inception, it is the only thing that truly sets us apart from other animals. It allows us to share our experiences and expertise in order to enrich our race and has taken us to heights (Tower of Babel anyone?) that no other organism is capable of attaining. Because of this it must be given much credit as the most effective and versatile medium for communication possible. But it is still unable to relate memory and knowledge flawlessly. I can not imagine a medium that would work better though. Even a martian-mind-meld still has its shortcomings in that we alter our own memories and change them to suit our needs. In that respect nothing can relate on occurrence to anyone who was not a part of it flawlessly. Our emotions are ours and have been created by all of our genes and experiences combined and could never fully be understood by another individual. Thus, I realize languages shortcomings but praise its successes.
Here's Sarai Glass's comment:
I agree that complete communication is impossible. I can never understand what someone is feeling, thinking, or experiencing unless by some magical power I would be able to actually BE that person. Verbal communication can fail us in that regard. I can never tell someone I love them, in the way that I mean it. The word "love" just doesn't cut it. I can say it over, and over, but it never conveys how I actually feel. Even through a most accurate use of tone, eye contact, body language, through use of all the different ways of interpreting communication, I will never be able to concretely relay my true feelings to another human being. I am intrigued by the idea that language is a barrier in itself because words can only hold so much meaning within the confines of a language. The word love can only mean so much in the English language. However, in Spanish, there are many words for the verb to like, or to love. They all have very specific meanings. But even within those meanings , they are still confined to that single emotion. I believe there are feelings that words cannot, and will never be able to describe. I feel almost trapped by this idea that complete communication is impossible. No one will ever really understand me. I can feel like that at times. But, I have to see that there is another side to communication. It is beautiful in the fact that we as humans try so hard to do just this- to try and get someone out there to really know us. And the simple act of communication is just a glimpse of what our true feelings are. When I say “I love you,” when I communicate that idea, with all the connotations that phrase carries, the other person knows that it is only a mere glimpse of what I truly feel. This can be reassuring at times, not knowing what another person is thinking. You can only imagine how much more it is that they feel for you when all they can say is, “I love you.”
you know, i really need to get a lot better about posting at least a little bit on time. honestly...that said, i really thought that ryan's post was fascinating. and i guess my core reaction to his analysis of language is that for me, language is the most subjective entity in existence. take poetry, for example. one person reads a poem and feels intense sadness and emptiness; another person reads the same poem and experiences happiness. language is something that cannot be reduced to a simple concept - it is constantly left up to the individual and his/her conception of it.
i also thought that ryan's comments on the deconstructive aspects of language were intriguing. and actually i disagree. i find language to be the only thing that can truly link individuals together, regardless of race, sex, religion, etc. it is one of the only things that every single person on this planet has in common, and therefore it transcends any sort of barrier. language is what separates us from other species, what makes us a bit more advanced (i hesitate to use the word superior because what really makes us superior is our ability to reason...which is also closely tied to language...this is just a side note i suppose) in comparison to other species on the planet. for me, language is the only thing that can never be broken - it must stay whole, because without it, we are nothing more than robots.
I have pondered over this particular post for a *long* time, and I believe I have finally come to a conclusion. I believe Ryan may be right about what he says about linguistic barriers. We cannot ever be sure that written language alone can convey a certain experience entirely the way it is intended. Nor, for that matter, can conversation. Nor, I will argue, can even first-hand observation. The fact is, each of us interprets the world slightly differently, and so even if we ourselves went through the exact same thing as another, we still wouldn't have the same interpretation of the event.
Yet, how often have we each read something--be it in a novel, a poem, a short story, whatever--and felt as though we were there? That we were in fact sharing the same experience as the character? My point here is that we may never be able to convey exactly the same experience (and we never really can know for sure, can we?) but we can come damn close. It may be difficult, but this truly is the challenge of writing. I personally am thankful that we are all just different enough to keep life interesting.
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