words

The one thing that I most distrust, is something that I cannot do without.

It is an extreme case of dependency from which there is no escape. It is an existantialist crisis wherein ignorance probably would have been bliss. Knowledge of the fact that you are being betrayed is inconsequential when you know your dependence on it is, in anyway, an imperative. For instance, you know the air you breathe is polluted ( atleast if you live in Delhi, you undoubtedly know so) but you cannot very well give up breathing for it! Neither is it feasible for you to give up your established life and source of livelihood to move off to a place which is less polluted. You know you are slow poisoning yourself but you really cannot do anything about it. Exasperating, isn't it?

That is the relationship I share with words. I distrust them highly because they are the most relative things on earth; (Hell, one word could be interpreted in a million ways! ) and yet I cannot seem to do without them! Language, seems to me, an extremely crude method of expression and yet I resort to language itself to express how crude it is!

Nature seems to abound in more profound ways of expression and yet, we, too inadequate to transmute to any other way, embrace language articulation as our only way.

Eve, in Milton's Paradise Lost says, "Language of man pronounced by tongue of brute and human sense expressed? The first atleast of these I thought denied To beasts, who God on their creation day Created mute to all articulate sound; The latter I demur, for in their looks Much reason, and in their actions oft appear." She later learns that the gift of language had been bestowed upon the brute by consumption of the forbidden fruit. Shouldn't it therefore have followed ( in an evolutionist teleology, not a creationist predetermination), that humans who were already endowed with language, be equipped with something greater, having been made privy to the knowledge of good and bad after consuming the very fruit? Afterall, ( stepping outside the religious parameter), good and bad being relative concepts, would require a more profound method to elucidate their meaning. However man remains oblivious to any such method and thus struggles eternally to bridge the gap between subjective experience and it's representation in words. The Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, in section XII, verse 37, says, "For by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned." It is refering to one's judgement day in heaven, but even if it is not god who is judging us, what we speak is often rather decisive in our social relationships. It is no wonder that the Greeks paid so much attention to rhetoric!

However assuming rhetoric to be an application of one's understanding of semantics, with 'a finite meaning inherent in a lexical unit that can be composed to generate meanings for larger chunks of discourse', is unacceptable to me for the sheer reason that it is in variance with what I perceive. Truth- conditional semantics, seems to me, an oversimplified way of studying linguistics. I would suggest that the Sapir-Whorf Hypotheses and Cognitive Linguistics are closer to mark when it comes to understanding communication because they acknowledge individual experiences and the environment of language users.

Richard Bach in his book 'One' speaks of parallel lives stemming from alternate perception. He says each person must attain his own enlightment, for as soon as one tries to enunciate one's knowledge, it becomes open to interpretation and mutates to subjective perception. Moreover, even a person's own 'enlightment' is mutating with time and experience. Therefore, perception is not just subjective but also transitory; and to encompass that in words, itself is a difficult task. Further, the folly of language lies in the fact that the listner will interpret those words entirely according to his own perception, even if the speaker is talented enough to restrict the arena of interpretation by careful choice of words.

It is as if different individuals were inhabitants of different orbs of existance and to communicate with others on their seperate orbs, they send words as flighty messengers. These messengers, even when sent to the same orb, are recieved through different portals at different times and therefore shed or gain relevance with each variant.

Verbosity often results in the loss of meaning and brevity is not my strongest point. Thus to elucidate my meaning, i quote George Eliot-
"Our words have wings, but fly not where we would."

Could there atleast be a tracing device so as to know where they flew off?