It took eight days. Eight long, frustrating days of battle against brambles in my chest and thistledown in my head. I feared at one point that my skull might shatter from the pressure and cast a million fluffy seeds free into the house (which would have been much to Tipper’s merriment) or that I might awaken to find myself merged with the sofa in a very Kafka’s-Samsa-meets-O’Brien’s-de Selby manner. And since I’m given to shelling myself with buckets of frustration when I’m not keeping up with things (this pleasant little passtime of mine falls under the category of ‘nice things acquired along my three-year misadventure’) I was lucky enough to top the whole charade off with a day-long stress-induced migraine. The freedom is feeling human again is most welcome.
Jack taught me today that there are no past or future tenses in Chinese. That I speak yesterday, I speak today, and I speak tomorrow. There was a program on the radio that I was sorry to have missed which talked about how language effects our perception of the world and the ways we behave it. I vaguely remember reading something about this a few years ago when I was poking around in linguistic theory, and how my thoughts ran amok considering all the ways in which our worlds are limited by this symbolism.
I equally remember reading vehement arguments against this idea (the details of which were far too onerous, if not downright fustian, in vocabulary for me to have truly internalized and been able to later recall).
I can’t help but feel that there must be something to it. Language as semiotic, as symbol, as stand-in, as mirror, as at times imposter, and even simulacra; itself defining what constitutes any given thing, rather than the thing itself being the matrix. Is it possible that society understands and reacts to its world primarily through the ways in which it communicates it? Is it possible that my understanding of and relationship to the world I exist in is experienced only through my learned symbolism of it? How restricted our understanding, our ability to exist. I can’t do much but offer questions, as I haven’t enough authority on the topic to offer statements, or answers (and lest I step on the toes of those linguists who might come parading to my house with torches and pitchforks).
What a language doesn’t have words for surely says just as much about it as the things for which it does, so it seems to me. I remember learning my freshman year, in an introductory critical thinking and art theory course, that language is a failure. That it will forever shortfall the depth and bredth of the truths for which it attempts to stand in for. Made worse in efforts to translate across different tongues (and, are not our own minds, laden with their unique lived experiences, memories, associations, each their own tongue as well?).
I don’t mean to sell language short of its absolute magnificence, or doubt my own love for it. To paraphrase David Chrystal, there is nothing more complex, nothing a greater testament to human creativity and innovation, nothing so impressive that we could possibly build with our hands or tools or technologies, as our languages, and all their incredible variations.
I need to stop now or this post will end up thrice as long.
