On Language

As a race of higher order thinking, we have developed many

ways to communicate, and, if we take the broad Darwinian way of

thinking it is our races best interest to make the most of our various

ways of communicating in order to attain the best possible way of life.

One such way of communicating (probably the most widely used) is

through language, whether it be spoken or written. Many people today,

especially the most recent generation, take communication through

language for granted. However, any language is a very intricate

creation with specific rules and structure that allow it to function. But

even with such rigid rules and structure, it is still a very flawed form of

communication, and therefore in order to use it to it’s full potential it is

imperative that the aforementioned rules and structures be followed.

In order to make the most of language as a communicator, we

must be aware of its flaws in order to consciously minalmalize the

effect of them when communicating. One of languages fundamental

flaws is that while it is possible to convey exact events that have

occurred, we may attempt, and may come close to adding thoughts,

feelings, comparisons, and opinions on said events, but inevitably the

subjectivity of words will cause the listener to eschew our meaning.

This happens simply by most definitions not actually being a

definition |ˌdefəˈni sh ən|

noun

Connor Scanlon
 1 a statement of the exact meaning of a word, esp. in a
dictionary.
• an exact statement or description of the nature, scope,
or meaning of something
• the action or process of defining something. (Macintosh)

How can you state ‘the exact meaning of’ a word like quickly?

You can always define it as something like ‘fast,’ but then how do you

define fast? Eventually you will end up in an infinite loop of looking up

words in the dictionary and therefore how the individual listening

to/reading the sentence will adhere to how the individual defines

quickly, which may be different than how the speaker/writer defined it.

Therefore, whenever attempting to convey thoughts, feelings,

comparisons, or opinions among others, they will most likely be at

least slightly misconstrued as now words have an ‘exact’ meaning, as

the dictionary says they should. For example: the sentence ‘He ran.’

states an exact happening, and lacks any thoughts, feelings,

comparisons, or opinions; however, the sentence ‘He ran quickly.’

attempts to add a comparison, and therefore could be misconstrued

from one person to another.

Of course, this is seemingly just the difference between

denotation and connotation. However, in my mind, there is no

denotation, for reasons stated above. If denotation is the literal

meaning of a word, or how it is defined in a dictionary, it will

undoubtedly be defined with other words, so in order to attain the true

denotation for a word, you will then have to look up those words lest

you let your subjective definitions for each ‘creep in’ and make a

Connor Scanlon
bastardized version of the denotation for a word and what you consider

the definitions for words. Words themselves hold no meaning; we hold

the meaning for words, so while words may have literal meaning to

ourselves, they do not have literal meaning when applied to any plural

of people trying to use them among each other. We can see this clearly

in words such as ‘awesome.’ While originally it meant ‘awe incurring,’

it has now been reduced to much lower levels of acclimation via

copious amounts of, in my mind, overuse, as agreed upon by

interviewed author Craig Morgan Teicher:

‘words, especially as they have been used in public discourse, seemed

to be tools of manipulation, whether for good or evil. And I think one
tenet of becoming a writer, one part of the apprenticeship, is coming to
understand that words are neutral - containers, boxes- they're born
empty, or filled only with what their first hearers put in them, and then
the meaning changes, is complicated or simplified, each time they're
used. (Teicher)’

It is also shown in the following comic by Ryan North:

Connor Scanlon
 Because language, as a form of communication, is flawed for

reasons stated above, we must be very careful to not inconvenience

ourselves further. However, we do so all the time, in the form of

‘political correctness’. The biggest case in recent history is the use of

the word ‘retarded’: people who were originally classified as ‘retarded’

were soon referred to as ‘mentally handicapped’ and then as

‘challenged’. And as the way they were referred to changed, activists

and other liberals alike limited our most important form of

communication. Most people’s consciences no longer allow them to

refer to something that will ‘delay or hold back in terms of progress,

development, or accomplishment’ (Macintosh) as retarded, thus our

already imperfect language is inhibited. However, as the film House of

D’s ‘mentally challenged’ character Pappass demonstrates, all

retarded is is a word, and because of the properties of words explained

above (i.e. that they have different meaning depending on the

interpreter) people only find it offensive because they choose to:

‘Pappass: I’m not retarded anymore.

Pappass’ Friend: Oh really?
Pappass: Really.
Pappass’ Friend: When did that happen?
Papass: 1984. Sometime in the spring. I went from retard to mentally
handicapped. And then in 1987-88, I went from handicapped to challenged. I
changed again. I'm probably changing right now. Who knows what I'll be
next?’ (House of D)

Obviously, words can hurt, and people find words offensive

because they are said in a hurtful connotation. However, that doesn’t

Connor Scanlon
mean that we should lose a piece of our already defective tool of

communication, but we should not use those words to refer to

something other than what they were originally intended for. For

example, in today’s society the term ‘Jew’ has come to mean more

than one of the Jewish faith, it also now is slang for ‘miser’, which is

totally unacceptable; the only reason for ‘Jew’ to be made synonymous

with ‘miser’ is to inflict pain upon others. But this doesn’t mean that we

should stop using Jew entirely, just that it shouldn’t be used in a

hateful context.

Being ‘politically correct’ not only is limiting our communication

with single words, but restricting our art forms. Television shows and

plays today have to have a diverse cast both in race and sex, lest they

be labeled sexist or racist (Although some radical shows such as South

Park poke fun at this convention, naming their ‘token’ black character

Token). Great works of literature are either being altered or no longer

taught to the youth because of a reference to God, even though the

reference neither advocates nor opposes the belief of one. The fear of

being sued and thinking for oneself scares our society too much to

print or say anything remotely controversial, which cripples our

communication more than any other flaw I have mentioned so far.

Author Ray Bradbury says, in an essay in concurrence with this thought

(Provided in full in the appendix, as he dictates frustration far more

eloquently than I could) says ‘There is more than one way to burn a

book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.’

Connor Scanlon
(Bradbury 177). If we wish to make the most out of our language,

which we should, we must be unafraid to voice our thoughts or

opinions regardless of these ‘politically correct’ tethers that are

retarding our communication.

Obviously, there are other ways to communicate opinions and

feelings alike apart from language, such as drawing, music, and other

various art forms. However, in today’s society we are bombarded in

such a way that as a young child we are almost forced into deducing

that speaking and writing are and should be the primary forms of

communication. I’ve heard arguments to the contrary, that one grew

up in a very liberal home and drawing and music-making were highly

encouraged. However, I doubt their parents/guardians tolerated them

drawing what they wanted for dinner, or playing a song about where

they wanted to go on vacation. As to whether or not allowing such

things would be an improvement is debatable, but nonetheless an

interesting topic to consider.

But, because it looks as though language will be the predominant

form of communication for quite a long time, if not for the rest of the

existence it would be optimal for us as a people to be able to attain the

most out of language, even though it is not the perfect communicator.

In order to do this we must realize the flaws that language has, and try

to minamalize them by being very conscious of what we are saying.

But even more importantly, we must use our language to its fullest,

despite ever growing pressure to restrict our thoughts and opinions,

Connor Scanlon
otherwise we may eventually be forced to the Orwellian alternative of

watching double-plus good propaganda.

Connor Scanlon
 Appendix

Coda to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

‘About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young

Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed reading my
experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles. But,
she added, wouldn't it be a good idea, this late in time, to
rewrite the book inserting more women's characters and roles?
A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail
concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks
in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn't I "do them over"?
Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting
that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story
should be dropped.

Two weeks ago my mount of mail delivered forth a pip-squeak

mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that
wanted to reprint my story "The Fog Horn" in a high school
reader.
In my story, I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night,
an illumination coming from it that was a "God-Light." Looking
up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature one would have
felt that one was in "the Presence."
The editors had deleted "God-Light" and "in the Presence."

Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for
school readers put together a volume with some 400 (count 'em)
short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain,
Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book?
Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render
down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that
moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito -
out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron's mouth
twitch - gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of
a first-rate writer - lost!
Every story, slenderized, starved, blue-penciled, leeched and
bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe
read like Shakespeare read like Doestoevsky read like - in the
finale - Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables
had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one
instant's attention - shot dead.

Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture? How did
I react to all of the above?
By "firing" the whole lot.
By sending rejection slips to each and every one.

Connor Scanlon
By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book.
And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.
Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian /
Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist,
Women's Lib / Republican, Mattachine / FourSquareGospel feels
it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light
the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of
all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature,
licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to
speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how

the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or
a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when
the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries
closed forever.
"Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the
window, they're coming through the door," are the words to an
old song. This fit my lifestyle with newly arriving
butchers/censors every month. Only six weeks ago, I discovered
that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine
Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit,
censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students,
reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and
book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite
irony. Judy Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having
the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the
damns and hells back in place.
A final test for old Job II here: I sent a play, Leviathan 99, off to a
university theater a month ago. My play is based on the "Moby
Dick" mythology, dedicated to Melville, and concerns a rocket
crew and a blind space captain who venture forth to encounter a
Great White Comet and destroy the destroyer. My drama
premieres as an opera in Paris this autumn.
But, for now, the university wrote back that they hardly dared to
my play - it had no women in it! And the ERA ladies on campus
would descend with ballbats if the drama department even tried.
Grinding my bicuspids into powder, I suggested that would
mean, from now on, no more productions of Boys in the Band
(no women), or The Women (no men). Or, counting heads, male
and female, a good lot of Shakespeare that would never be seen
again, especially if you count lines and find that all the good
stuff went to the males!
I wrote back maybe they should do my play one week, and The
Women the next. They probably thought I was joking, and I'm
not sure that I wasn't.
For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the
minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-
head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-

Connor Scanlon
Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real
word is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or
unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or
poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives
begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them
write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent
typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my
jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat
stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly
manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my
"Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt
unravel and the pants fall.
For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take philosophic
asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and
what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once:
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of
reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign
in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a
bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the
appetite to fail.
In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings
or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to
shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to
shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted,
to become a non-book.
All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the
showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At
sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm going out again, giving it
the old try.
And no one can help me. Not even you. (Bradbury. 175-179)’

Connor Scanlon
 Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451 Fahrenheit 451--the temperature at

which book paper catches fire, and burns ... New York: Ballantine
Books, 1988. Print.

House of D. Dir. David Duchovny. By David Duchovny. Prod. Richard B.

Lewis, Bob Yari, and Jane Rosenthal. Perf. David Duchovny, Anton
Yelchin, Robin Williams, and Erykah Badu. Lions Gate Films,
2004. DVD.

Macintosh. “Definition.” Digital.

Macintosh. “Retarded.” Digital.

North, Ryan. "Joy Comics." Comic strip. Dinosaur Comics. Ryan North,
23 Sept. 2003. Web. 5 Jan. 2010.
<http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=166>.

Teicher, Craig M. "Ten Authors Answer Three Questions on Politics and

Writing." Interview. 12th Street Apr. 2009: 81. Print.

Connor Scanlon