Words: 546

The limitation of language

Ajit Baral

The earliest human beings communicated through the sign language and grunts. And it was sufficient to express themselves as long as humans had just a few social contacts, desires and activities and other interests. However, with the passing of time, the social contacts, desires and activities of human populations started to increase, and it no longer became possible to get by on the sign languages and grunts alone. Human pockets, then, perforce, had to devise newer way of expressing their respective thoughts and feelings; and that is how phonetics, alphabets and languages got formed.

Noam Chomsky says we learn language instinctively, without being taught; and we have the capacity, by virtue of being humans, to generate sentences that we have never heard before. But despite this gift, humans, at times, cannot make sentences and be understood by a reader or a listener the way they like them to be understood. This is the limitation of language, which is located within and outside the language realms.

Allow me cite an example to demonstrate how inadequate language can be. A friend has bought, let’s say, a pair of pajamas, the colour of it garish red. I don’t like the colour and I say to him in a good spirit: “Oh, what an ugly pair of pajamas you have bought!” He may not like what I said, and think I am trying to slight his choice of colour. Here I have not been able to communicate to the friend the real intention behind my comment on that pair of ugly pajamas. The limitation of language is at play here, you see.

Linguists like Ferdinand de Saussure say that mind works in binary opposition, that is, the mind derives meaning from sets of dichotomies: true/false, western/eastern, right/wrong, conservative/modern, etc. So there is always the possibility of mind interpreting the other of what is actually expressed, and the true meaning of the lexical items being lost somewhere in between. Moreover, something is lost and added between the time of writing and speaking, and reading and listening, which creates the so-called communication gaps.

There are perceptive differences among people and a host of pre-conceived ideas, personal biases come into play while reading a text or hearing sentences. These impede in the derivation of the true meaning from written or expressed sentences. In case of spoken sentences, the derivation of meanings has to be spontaneous and when an act is spontaneous.

Bhaskar Roy, the exponent of Meta-Reality, says one can be in unity with something outside of oneself, which is transcendental identification. “Transcendental identification” as Roy puts it, “is essential for any communicative act.” So there is just a little chance of being misunderstood in spoken sentences. But not so in the case of written sentences. No wonder that the interpretation of the Upanishads and other classics differ from person to person.

Contradictions, deconstructionists say, are inherent in sentences. In the jumble of contradictions the real meaning gets lost, and what you wanted to express is never conveyed.

Wittgenstein wrote that “Meaning emerge out of the play of making worlds out of words.” But words have subtle nuances, which often give the wrong, rather than the intended, meanings, leading to varied interpretations – funny and not so funny.