Stephani Stephenson on tue 10 sep 02
After some privately exchanged feedback and reflection , maybe I can
clarify some things from earlier post on same topic.
My thoughts, scratched out in a midday email are far from complete .
Our precise (or not)
language is certainly not so, in the hands of rogue individuals such as
myself!
In my post on languages I was certainly 'thinking out loud' while I was
writing, posing more questions really than answers.
By saying that english was a good language for writing technical manuals
I did not mean to say that it was ONLY good for that.
Thank goodness for the writers who do make beautiful music with their
words
and express deep thoughts and feelings with this language. They have
given us treasures over
the years. So I did not mean to slight my mother tongue.
She is, of course, an expressive language. Yet ,the comments about
English
as the language of commerce have always stuck with me, and make sense
to me.
RE: the author/linguist I read ; he presented his case far more
completely than I
can represent . So perhaps it was a mistake to try, in the brief context
of
an email and without his reference material at hand.
I think at the core of my post was the true (for me) and real sense that
, (speaking only
for myself here), verbal/written language falls short of adequate
expression in certain areas .
(English is the language I speak so it is what I am talking about.)
In any verbal discussion of 'art' for example, I find myself grasping,
searching for words to express concepts . Using somehow inadequate
terms to express a multitude of objects made for a multitude of
reasons. God and/or spiritual matters are another area where the
language seems uncomfortable, awkward, inadequate. Where
the words do not fit. Can get around some of it with analogy, poetry.
Lose precision , though perhaps gain an overall word image and response
this way , in trying to express intuitive concepts.
I know that I am not entirely alone in this . In many discussions of
'art' I see many of us struggling to jam things
into word categories that do not seem rich enough or adequate enough or
real
enough to convey the contents of the topic. (you see I am having
trouble with
the words right now!) So maybe part of it is our own inability to use
the language, but the thought has occurred to me that the language
itself may be a factor.
The area where I too see fuzzy logic in my prior post is that I am not
clear whether
it is simply that I feel ANY verbal language presents difficulties in
this
area, or whether specific languages present greater difficulties in
this
area. I had always believed the former, but something about the latter
strikes me as
a possibility. I really don't know the answer to this.
Because I do not speak other languages fluently I can only rely on
secondhand information about other languages.
I had always thought it difficult to discuss certain topics because of
problems inherent in ALL verbal languages, i.e. verbal language has
always
felt a bit like a 'second' language to me. This is certainly not true
for
everyone but it is true for some of us.
Reading the work on the Tewa and Navajo tongues opened my eyes a little
bit
about how languages can differ and how maybe my assumptions that verbal
language itself was an inadequate translator for some experiences, were
not
true.
I am not knowledgeable enough to tell you which language shines in which
particular way. I have heard people talk about the beauty of many many
languages, and especially the pleasure of reading work by different
authors in
their native tongues. But for a moment I saw how it could be that
certain
languages could really, greatly , differ.
The initial motivation for my post was that I was questioning if
'precision'
in language was in fact , the most important element in a discussion on
art. .
What I mean by that is that going in and dissecting a subject is not
the only
way to grasp it. Sometimes stepping back and getting a sense of the
whole is a
good tool. Our intellect is a great tool, but our intuition is also a
great
tool. I am not sure that funneling everything through the meat grinder
of
intellectual , reductive reasoning is the only way to arrive at
understanding.
But by the end of my post I did change course, wondering if our
language was , in fact, not
precise enough ( in certain areas)? So I was rambling in my thinking,
If this had been a term paper I would have gone over it and hammered out
the
inconsistencies and examined and quoted my references.
but it isn't a term paper, it is an email. and what I am trying to flesh
out,
is not so much a linguistic theory but a gut feeling I have always had.
And yes, because I couldn't penetrate the likes of Hegel or others ,
doesn't mean
that Hegel was a bad writer, or a bad thinker . gad!
(first off, many of the writings were translated into English from
Greek, German and French, among other languages.)
It just means his language and reasoning were incomprehensible to me
and that I had difficulty relating his words
to my own direct experience of the subject matter.
And when push comes to shove, direct experience with the subject matter
is the primary , though not sole, source of my understanding .
sincerely, (if ANYONE is still reading.....)
Stephani Stephenson
by the way, in high school we took a lengthy standardized test which was
supposed to tell us which careers to choose and which to avoid. There
were hundreds of categories. the test ranked our aptitude for all of
them
On mine, at the VERY bottom, right below 'Home economics', was
'philosophy'. At the top was Russian. (????)
Someone tell me about Russian! Other languages were much further down
the list....have no idea what THAT was all about....
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