Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts upon the unthinking. bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 1994 It speaks itself against our will, in words and thoughts that intrude, even violate the most private spaces of mind and body … Words impose themselves, take root in our memory against our will. Like desire, language disrupts, refuses to be contained within boundaries. After all, disruptcomes from the Latin for “break away.” Writers and philosophers like Monique Wittig and May Sarton identify the power of words to impose themselves. Words can jar the audience out of their day-to-day considerations and encourage them to act differently. While language can be beautiful, it can also be shocking and disruptive. Virginia Woolf, The Waves, 1931 disruption Argument, laughter, old grievances-they fall through the air, thickening it. He says, she says, somebody else says things have been said so often that one word is now enough to lift a whole weight. I don’t believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.” -Anne from Anne of Green Gables by L.M. “ I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. Gaston Bachelard, Fragments of a Poetics of Fire, 1988 The best writers can use words to demonstrate both forms of beauty at once, as in the quote from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, where the words and cadence are aesthetically pleasing and also leave the impression of a nostalgic reverie.Ī special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language. The words themselves can be beautiful, as the precocious Anne from Anne of Green Gables notes about the word rose, and they can also make one think of beauty in the world. Maria Zambrano Alarcón, Por qué se escribe, 1934Īs any poet worth their salt could tell you, one important power of language is to emphasize beauty. Discovering the hidden and communicating it, these are two spurs that drive the writer. But what cannot be said is what must be written. “There are things that cannot be said,” it is true. Noah Webster, preface to American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 Language is the expression of ideas and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language. Otherwise, how could people effectively communicate with one another? The creator of the American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster, felt that a common language (with its own spelling rules) was important for the formation of an American national identity. attributed to Carol Burnett connectionĪnother important role of language is to give humans the ability to build connections with one another. Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own. Spillers, Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe, 1987 In order for me to speak a truer word concerning myself, I must strip down through layers of attenuated meanings, made an excess in time, over time, assigned by a particular historical order, and there await whatever marvels of my own inventiveness. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922 The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. In fact, the word imagination comes from the Latin imāginātiō, which means “mental image.” The philosopher Wittgenstein even went so far as to believe that humans can only imagine things that they have language for. When we read a good novel, we picture the events in our mind’s eye it’s almost as if we are on the adventure ourselves. One of the key powers of language is to encourage and broaden our imagination. This article gathers some of the thoughts of these experts to showcase a few of the powers words have, from imagination and connection to disruption and liberation. Few understand the power of language more than writers and philosophers, who use words as the essential tools of their craft. Words can transport you to other worlds, conjure up emotions, and spark inspiration.
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