On the Nature of Language, and the Necessity of the Human Stamp

Our words dictate our thoughts. Although many crowds would decry the concept of arrested conception, many philosophers and post-structuralist analyzers realize the gravity of our own diction. Thought does not dictate word, as some would think: some amorphous concept manifesting itself through spoken word. Instead, word dictates and decrees thought.

Let me try to explain. First off, if word was produced from thought—and taking into consideration that humans have averagely uniform systems—then one would expect all words to have direct correlations between languages, and one would expect languages to be in identical order, identical patterning, and identical meaning; however, this is not the case.

For example, consider this sentence in French:

Here we have an excerpt of Alfred de Musset’s “La Confession d’un enfant du siècle” (1836), which was a novel that had a lot to say about the role of Romanticism in post-revolutionary France.

«  . . . le siècle présent, en un mot, qui sépare le passé de l’avenir, qui n’est ni l’un ni l’autre et qui ressemble à tous deux à la fois, et où l’on ne sait, à chaque pas qu’on fait, si l’on marche sur une semence ou sur un débris. Voilà dans quel chaos il fallut choisir alors; voilà ce qui se présentait à des enfants pleins de force et d’audace, fils de l’empire et petit-fils de la Révolution.»

Now a direct translation into English:

“…the century present, in one word, who separates the past from the future, who not is neither the one neither the other and who resembles to all two to the time, and where it one not knows, to each not that one makes,  if it one walks on a seed or on a debris. Here in what chaos it necessitates to choose so; here this who them presented to of the children full of force and of boldness, son of the empire and little-son of the Revolution.”

Now, the meaning here comes across at utterly ridiculous, if it even comes across at all; if the meaning is not completely locked to us. This is because we have presented to us English words, but harnessed to a French conception; to a French way of thinking and ordering. Logically, one would assume the uniformity of man would lead to a simple, easy translation. However, the two are simply not compatible. This small exercise shows how the English and the French have different ways of cognizance. This is also why learning a language is so difficult. It’s more than memorizing flash cards and vocabulary words: it’s reformulating your very thought process. You are not just learning French words, but French thought. Now, some may argue the difference in only syntactical, but is that not perception itself? The French say, “J’ai faim”(I have hunger), whereas the English say “I am hungry,” and true they both infer a similar sense of food lacking, but there is a difference there. Or simply think of the fact that the French have an entirely different subject form for the formal direction of “you” (vous). Thus it is no surprise that there are such vast cultural differences between different languages (i.e. English vs. the Japanese, who, among many other differences, have no future verb tense).  

And so there is a different in thought and perception between language groups, although this is the same even on the English pattern. If you and I were presented a series of blue paint chips, you would most likely be able to differentiate between the different shades, but I, as a painter, would be able to organize and name them off in titles such as cobalt blue, Prussian blue, ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, Yves Klien Blue, etc. Does that necessary divide our perceptions? No, it does distinguish them.  And if you were asked to recall which color(s) you saw, you would be left with simply the vague, all-inclusive, hue-absorbing statement, “I saw blue,” whereas I would be the one to be able to give a calculated name to the exact hue.

Language is symbolic: words are symbols; letters are symbols. Whereas the writing of the letter “t” calls for the tongue to be pressed towards the back of the teeth and unclenched with an aspirated release, a written “m” calls for both the lips to be closed over the front teeth and then lightly burst open with a short breath, and also, let’s take the “s”, which requires the mouth to be barely open, the tongue set to the roof of the mouth, and a breath let slipping around the corners out of the mouth. These letters are small, contoured scribbles that are suggestive of somatic action.

Words are just as complex symbols. For example, “table” conjures the object of an averagely large flat plane (usually rectangular) supported by (usually) four inanimate “legs.” Anything else beyond this glorified, minimalist interpretation of “table” would require an adjective modifier: “broken table,” “miniature table,” etc. Or think of the word “horse”, which encompasses all subspecies of the equine race, including its ancestry and anything that resembles it. To say “horse” is to conjure a beautifully nonspecific, impossible equine-archetype: a symbol that describes all, yet describes none.

Then we have the issue of syntax. Where “bear” is an ursine, mammalian form, but “to bear,” preceded by a grammatical particle to form an infinite verb is suggestive of enduring, supporting, or conducting oneself. Here the exact same noun symbol, placed around certain other English syntactical symbols, can create altogether different meaning and effect.

In the previous examples, we can see how word delineates perception and thought, and we can also understand how the word, or to say, the symbol, is not just important but absolutely necessary for external and internal interpretation. Words, at their most basic and most complex, are at once and for always, specific human inventions: stamps of humanity labeling all.

This is not to say that existence would be impossible without word: after all, childhood amnesia, the inability to remember our pre-word years, has many theories, and even the one based around language development proposes that it’s not that the child cannot remember anything, but that by the time they are adults, their early wordless memories are incomprehensible and inaccessible to the adult symbolic mind.  This could be the same as animals, who no doubt have memory, but who do not have the necessary cognitive strength to create words like humans do.

However, as mature humans, we exist solely through these symbols—these human interpretations: a mountain, what is a mountain? What calculation divides it from a hill, a mound, or between that word and a cliff, or a volcano? What is a mountain? A human invention—as we have differentiated it from hills and mounds. It is a human order. The sky? A division we have made between water and land. There is no external value to any of these words; no inherent concept. A tree, what is a tree? What are the oak, willow, and cottonwood? They are human order externalized onto the quantitative world. We have assigned meanings to them all. We look out to the world and we record what is around us though these symbols and we think because of these symbols:

“The sky [not “a sky” or “the skies”] is [not “was” not “will be”] blue [not “grey” not “black”].”

In addition to that, there is necessity of wordage as a block against the external world. We splice, split, minimize, and compartmentalize in order to simply survive the daily onslaught of stimulus. Imagine if, at any given point in time, you suddenly had to take in (without any sense of order or understanding), every smell, every sound, every image, and every physical sensation around you? One would overload. System failure. It would be like trying to pack a moving truck without using a single cardboard box. Now this of course creates a sense of displacement, where the word acts as a middleman between us and the world, but a necessary one at that, as it holds us to a form, but it gives us form just the same; it holds, it gives; the word is our shackle, the word is our wing. 

Our world permeates with humanness, with the human creation, and not simply permeates with it, but actually rests entirely on it. We cannot exist or function without our own humanness—our word, our neurological organization; our wordage specific to direct human oral physiology and dictation of human cognition: rain, heat, sadness, hunger; all are the human invention: the word; the projection of the human. Without being surrounded by the human, we cease to comprehend, we cease to record. I and you and all of us cannot exist without this, the word, the human stamp, pressed flat against every element, emotion, and sensation. We cannot organize without labels. We cannot comprehend without a tangibility. We, the human, cannot exist without being surrounded and enveloped by ourselves: the human.