I thought the idea of language in The Witness was very interesting. Language not only is linked to identity of oneself, but also the identity of things around us. Language is how we map the world that we live in. In one passage, the narrator talks about meanings of words. He describes that unexpected feeling when you realize the strangeness of a word, and almost detach it from the object it is associated with. He writes, “For a few moments familiar objects are totally alien to us, inert and remote despite their nearness. The commonest word, one we use all the time, begins to sound strange, detaches itself from its meaning and becomes pure noise” (135). Here he is describing how we have the ability to remove an object from the actual name of the object. The word itself is just something that we have created to identify it, and give it a meaning. But once we realize that it can be separated, it becomes strange and detached from us. We know the world around us through the words and language that we have grown up using. A tree is a tree because that’s what we were taught to call it. The narrator goes on to say that, “Out of curiosity, we say it again, but no amount of repetition brings back the meaning which before had seemed so obvious to us. On the contrary, the more we repeat the word, the stranger and more unfamiliar it sounds” (135). The narrator has realized the word only has meaning because society has given it meaning. The attempt to make sense of a word again is impossible because repeating it over and over again only makes it sound more foreign. He describes such a feeling as noticing an absence of meaning. I know I’ve experience something like this before, but it’s hard to put into words.
2 Replies to “The Meaning of a Word”
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I agree that this was a fascinating passage. I’ve certainly had quite a few moments like that, and I think they’ve happened mostly when I’ve had to repeat a word out loud a lot (like while memorizing lines or something). It’s also interesting that the cabin boy makes this observation while speaking his “second language,” instead of his native one. I would think a linguistic realization like this would more likely happen while speaking the language one is most used to, but perhaps Saer is making a statement about the arbitrary nature of language here. It’s all the same! It’s just sounds! There’s often such a competition of superiority between languages, but they’re all just arbitrary tools used to access a culturally subjective meaning.
I agree that I found this concept fascinating as well. At my old school, I read a book for another class about a man “without language.” He had grown up deaf and mute, and grew up in an area that was impoverished, and so he farmed pretty much in solitude, lacking most human interaction. After he wandered into the United States, he had no concept of language – i.e. he did not know that there was a verbal sound that corresponded to a group of objects (i.e.: tables). He could group things together – he did not like green objects, for example, and so he obviously recognized that they shared a common characteristic that linked them together, but he had no way to express this. His first realization that people moving their mouths corresponded to a sound which corresponded to an object was an earth-shattering one for him, and it made me realize what a complex concept language really is. This passage reminded me of that book. Very interesting!