Unspeakable

In my experience, very many things are hard to explain. Such a predicament is a frequent source of frustration for me, eliciting gritted teeth and a cursed apostrophe to Reason or Communication or some such. Most of these dis-communications are usually re-communicated with some level of relief, even if the speaker has to go on arduously explaining what she means with a long winded sentence such as this. But no matter how deep a hole one digs on these matters, she can always, with enough time and effort, dig herself out. Lately, though, several conversations have brought me outside of the world of the communicable, and into the clouds.

Matters such as equality, ethics, emotion and (though I hate to break the e-lliteration) true-selfhood bring me away from this reality, and beyond what I find myself able to explain. I suppose this has something to do with the field of Metaphysics, though on a much less Theo-centric twist. I'm reading about Taosim as of late, and I get the feeling that reading books or talking with people is not the way to learn. Some things are better left to intuition and experience.

Embedded in this frustration at non-lucidity is the notion that one should be able to clearly explain ones ideas, so that two minds become one in their understanding of such-and-such a notion. It seems that with enough words and explanation, our interlocutors and we should have a crystal clear view of the truth before us. After all, if Truth is absolute, it would be the same for everyone, right? And, if we cannot express it, is it possible that we don't know what we're talking about? (For what do we know that we cannot express?) If I can't tell my classmate what I see from my perspective, could it be that my vision is too foggy to say, for sure, what (or how) the visage is?

My guess is that we do indeed see foggily. Our vision is never infinitely good. And, similarly, our communication is never infinitely lucid. As my friend and I talk about the truth from our own perspectives, undoubtedly our vantage points are different, and we could indeed be seeing two very different angles of what may be the same concept. Your side of the beach ball could be blue and orange, and white. The ball , I'll argue, is red, and white and yellow.

And we'll talk, and talk, and talk ourselves dizzy until we acknowlege our inadequate communication, our differing paradigms, and our own flawed vision.

Cop Out

This is from my Study of Modern English Class on the Topic "Who Wants to be a Linguist:"

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

"Linguistics," I assert when my grandmother asks what I want to study. She blinks, a blank look on her face.

"And that is...?" she returns.

"Well, um, it's, um... It's hard to explain."

To most, linguistics seems a nebulous field. I plan to spend my career studying and teaching it, and still have trouble coming up with the right words. I have tried saying that it's the study of languages, to which the reply is often, "So how many of them are you studying?" Language seems to be neatly segregated into the "non-math, non-science" category in our minds, so it's hard for many to understand how (and why) the two come together. By applying a scientific approach to studying language, however, linguistics not only informs our understanding of words and how we use them, but also allows us to objectively address our own bias, and expose social injustice.

Considering the ubiquity of language, it seems uncanny how often it is used to judge others. We often parse speakers of different dialects or languages into their own categories, and look down on them for being slovenly, uneducated, or illogical. The truth is, as one reads repeatedly from Bauer & Trudgill (1998), that language is highly organized, predictable, and perfectly valid. Bauer (1998) responds to the myth that "Some Languages Have no Grammar" with "All [languages] allow the precise communication of complex messages, and this requires grammar" (p. 79). Languages have to have rules to indicate the meaning of the utterances spoken. He later writes, "A language without grammar is a contradiction in terms" (p. 84). If language is a manner of communicating ideas, a language without grammar cannot exist. Many say that a language lacks the rules that ‘civilized' languages have, usually referring to Latin. While this may be true, in order for it to function as such, a language must have rules, and is perfectly capable of conveying thoughts accurately and precisely. By understanding the systematic nature of language, we can appreciate all language as legitimate. Evans (1998) also gets at this idea. His experience with Aboriginal languages, and peoples' attitudes toward them, shed light on the complexity and sophistication of languages many people term "primitive." One Aboriginal language has declensions as Latin does. And the adaptation of a singular noun to refer to one or two or more of that noun is efficient and rule-governed. Furthermore, many Aborigines not only learn their own complex language, but typically learn two or more languages from their spouses, grandparents, parents, and friends. Is a culture really "primitive" or uneducated if its members are multilingual? Predispositions to one's own language may blind them to the strengths of others'.

Such bias against different ways of speaking can have some devastating outcomes. In his "How I got into Linguistics, and What I got out of it," Labov (1997) chronicles how his research uncovered some nasty truths about discrimination, through studying language. In one study, he and colleagues found that the disparity between black and white students' reading abilities in Harlem was due to "the symbolic devaluation of African American Vernacular English that was part of the institutionalized racism of our society" (p. 4). Characterizing a trend in his research, he also notes that "increasing segregation in the northern cities is depriving the black community of its basic resources, and is in danger of creating a permanent underclass" (p. 5). Without his empirical approach to language, it's hard to believe that he would have exposed this important truth.

This clip draws out some important questions surrounding language bias. Garrard McClendon, the author of the book Ax or Ask asserts that African Americans should learn to "defend themselves" from failure by learning the "rules of the game" when in the field of American English. This is certainly an effective way to adapt to a system hostile to nonstandard dialects. But is this right? Should speakers of African American English have to change their dialect to succeed in our system? It seems to me that if we have learned anything from our study of language, it is that any dialect is legitimate. So, in a system that unjustly discriminates against legitimate language on the mere basis of its being nonstandard, it's the discriminators that have the burden of change, and not the discriminated. Thank goodness we have a scientific method of studying these languages and their differences; and it is linguistics that offers us this approach, without which we may not be able to step outside our stigmas and uncover the truth about something we seem so familiar with: our language.

References

Bauer, W. (1998). Myth 10: Some Languages Have no Grammar. In Bauer L & Trudgill, P. (Eds.), Language Myths (pp. 77-84). London: Penguin Books.

Evans, N. (1998). Myth 19: Aborigines Speak a Primitive Language. . In Bauer L & Trudgill, P. (Eds.), Language Myths (pp. 159-168). London: Penguin Books.

Labov, William. (1997). How I got into Linguistics. Retrieved March 10, 2008, from http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/HowIgot.html