Since the school year has begun, it seems as though I've been struggling with writing and discussing my thoughts. Words seem to get stuck at the tip of my tongue and are not quite capable of expressing everything that I really mean. It’s certainly not uncommon, but very frustrating. Sometimes, there simply aren’t words to express what I mean. Unfortunately there are few other methods of communication, other than language. There’s charades I suppose, but that’s even more limited than language. Pictures can sometimes imply meanings that words cannot, but it’s not particularly practical to communicate with pictures. So people are left to use language, despite its occasional inadequacy. Communication is necessary, though, of course. Many times it’s even empowering. Over the summer I helped my mildly autistic brother in sessions with a speech therapist so that he can learn to speak more clearly. It frustrated him when people couldn’t understand what he was saying because he couldn’t enunciate clearly. Because of the lessons, he’s been having more conversations and seems more confident. So, language can be both empowering and limiting and it’s this duality that I’ve decided to examine.
Over the summer, I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I found Oscar’s grandfather’s life to be a clear example of the duality of language. Oscar’s grandfather had stopped speaking. His only way of communication was through writing and gestures. Because he often ran out of pages in his journal, he had to use the limited number of phrases he’d already written to best state his meaning. He gives an example, of having to use, “the regular please” as an answer for how he’s feeling. In that way language was limiting him. To him, not speaking is almost a way of not living. He states later in the book, “it’s a shame we have to live, but it’s a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I’d had two lives, I would have spent one with her. I would have stayed in the apartment with her…said ‘I want two rolls,’ sang, ‘Start spreading the news,’ laughed, ‘Ha ha ha!’ ”(Foer 133). He doesn’t enjoy the life he leads, but he chooses not to, if he had a second life he would choose to actually live by communicating. In that way, language empowers life, makes ‘living’ possible.
This idea reminded me of a theme of several articles we read last year. They focused on modern loss of communication. That, since it is so easy now to send message, the messages we send mean very little. People say things through writing that they wouldn't say out loud or to someone’s face. In a way this empowers the message sender, to say hurtful things with little if any repercussions. At the same time it limits other messages, since tone and emotions cannot be expressed through a text. This ability to spread messages also empowers the message sender by allowing many people to read his message. For example, if he were a blogger, he could gain many followers through the internet. At the same time though, this ease creates more messages (or blogs, or internet articles) than anyone could actually read, and it gets lost in the masses of available information. This doesn't limit the words’ impact but it can limit those that are impacted.
Hi, Jordan.
ReplyDeleteYes, language can be both empowering and limiting. This is certainly a big question, and it sounds like it comes from a deep and personal place in you, and your relationship with your brother. Communication is certainly changing in our world, and rapidly. I suppose the fact that we still use language, or something like it, isn’t that different. But you’re so right about the methods we use to send those words, and that the form is actually determining the content to a frighteningly large extent. The anonymity is freeing, on the one hand, but how will the writer use that freedom? And what happens when we can’t say the thing we want to say?
Are the best ideas unsayable? There are many poems and sacred writings that say exactly that. Language is a vehicle that can only take you so far. When literal language stops working for meaning what we need to communicate, we have metaphor and poetry, but often that simply points the finger toward the moon, rather than explaining or presenting the moon. We get stuck on the finger pointing, sometimes…
It sounds like this question was hard to apply to Oedipus, and I can see why. One thing that’s interesting to think about, though, is the degree to which our ability to think in language and express those ideas, determines our identity. I think it’s a good argument that the degree to which we are able to clarify our own thoughts (especially about ourselves) and understand our world, is the degree to which we are more fully ourselves. We become who we are by our ability to express the vast catalogues of information inside of us. How we organize them is meaningful.
Lots of people will say we think in language, and that’s that. But if you have autism, you will probably say, no, we think in pictures. There’s no question that Picasso “thought” with pictures too, and that is valid and valuable. I sometimes wonder if we are leaving language for the image, the photo, the video, and as we gravitate toward the icon rather than the word, what will happen to us? Will we define ourselves by icons too? We’re already walking around with logos attached to our feet, our shirts, etc. I hope you have found something of value in my ramblings, Jordan. I like your idea and look forward to seeing where you go with it.