Words Over-Easy

In balance of my silence, I want to examine the different ways in which I use language, and the particular effects its different uses have on me. I realized that we all engage in a variety of rhetoric, depending on our moment-to-moment situations. There is a rhetoric for conversation with friends, generally less formal and hinging off of an implied context of mutual understanding than say would be academic rhetoric, in which we would employ an elevated use of vocabulary and make context explicit in words for utmost clarity and proof of intelligence. Speech with friends includes more play and wit of words, can make great leaps from topic to topic, and even come back full circle after multiple interruptions and interjections. There is a sort of loose, free-form weaving of ideas that encourages the meandering of thoughts, the effusiveness of emotions. When we speak in an academic setting, we imitate the language, the vocabulary, trajectories of thought, and meanings of those that we read, who we deem to be of certain authority. There is a rhetoric for parents, which could include some degree of censorship or filtering, a rhetoric for lovers, draped in terms of endearment and often a rawness of emotion encapsulated in words exchanged (words delicate and highly flammable). It is possible we even have a rhetoric that we reserve only for our own inner ear.

My work rhetoric as a waitress at the breakfast joint Slim Goodies is full of repetition. After many hours waiting tables, I feel as if I have slipped into auto-pilot, thoughtlessly running through a handful of phrases that apply to most communicative needs. Like a mockingbird that sings as if on loop, I become an automated recording of myself, and hear myself speaking as if from afar. While I can surely snap out of my floating reverie of detachment to my immediacy if something on the outside engages me, such as a customer who actually desires to interact with me as the person and not just me as a figurehead representing the means to a full belly, I am mostly insulated in my inner world of thoughts with content far removed from my speech. I thus experienced it entirely possible to be speaking and thinking worlds apart, especially through the use of habitual rhetoric that does not require much focus or effort.

I realized too in this setting that we not only draw from distinct wells of language depending on situation, but our voices, the very sounds we make, too change. We speak a different plane of sound to affect or appeal to different listeners, inflecting and texturing, sweetening or deepening to the ears of particular listeners. When I serve customers, my voice becomes higher in pitch, my accent rounded and my rhythm chipper, my language polite but decidedly informal (this was a definite change from the rhetoric I had been required to use at my previous job, an upscale tapas restaurant). After some time at Slim Goodies, I caught myself saying “ya’ll” very often, and didn’t remember ever having used it regularly before. While the choice was most likely not conscious, I reflected that I probably had adapted my accent to be more accepted by locals, and “more southern” for tourists looking for that local color and flare that affirms they are having a “true New Orleans experience.” I highly encourage this exploration of the ways in which we conform (consciously or not) to the uses of different rhetoric in different circumstance. One might even try switching to an out-of-context rhetoric and see how odd it feels. Speak to a baby as you would to your Environmental Theory professor. Or perhaps this is a good idea.

Welcome fellow dwellers of language!

The time has come to enter into yet another phase of my thesis experiment. In choosing this medium of a blog, I wished the form of the project to reflect the nature of its content. Those who study linguistics are aware that languages change shape over time--words are added and lost, shortcuts fortified in search of the quickest route to meaning, social and cultural dynamics serve as sieve to favor certain expressions that are period-relevant, as well as favor possible meanings of words highlighted by their positive and negative associations of that time ("Oil" means something very specific in 2011). Language changes especially in exposure to other culture's languages, a process likely accelerated and intensified by increasingly globalized communications made possible by the internet. (Note: "Add to dictionary" option as Spell-Check gives "globalized" the red flag). In an age of demand for instant gratification, the speed of language exchanges must be even quicker, even more efficient and effortless. A professor wrote "LOL" on one of my papers. Shakespeare would be trampled for tarrying.

Language is not static. And so, I wish to be neither this thesis about language. My practice of silence and other means to acute observation to study how language connects us to the world indicates that language is as ever-changing as the world(s) it signifie(s), and that the way to its ephemeral truths is to encounter it subjectively. I can only listen so much, read so much, and live so much language to stumble across so many questions that lead me to possible discoveries. Language does not exist for an individual, but between individuals. Language is an ecological interaction. For these reasons it is time for the blog to go public. I have laid the grounds (?) and planted the questions, but now what this project needs more than anything is to grow into its own organism. And evolve.

And so. This is an invitation for fellow dwellers of language to participate in an examination of their residence in the world of words. Please feel free to stalk silence, or stay in speech, or embark in any language-related experiment of your own, whatever way is most revealing to you. Be as concrete or as theoretical as you wish to be, as long as what you wish to share may be a spark for another. Or not. Dead ends can be interesting too.

Feed the blog! I thank you!

Language Frames Ecological Relations

One of the essential questions that I wished to explore in this thesis is that of how language shapes our ecological realities. In Jack Turner's The Abstract Wild, he asserts that the rhetoric used to define Nature or the Wild determines how a relationship is thenceforth carried out. To begin to tend to the wounds of the planet and patch our damaged marriage, we must first opt for a new way of referring to it (and I would even venture to say addressing it). In Turner's words:

"Since a theory is merely a description of the world, a new set of agreements about the West [environmentalism] requires some new descriptions of the world and our proper place in it ...The fight is over intellectual, not physical, resources. Environmentalists fight to reduce the authority of certain descriptions--e.g., 'private property'-- and to extend the authority of other descriptions--e.g., 'ecosystem' "(p. 54).

Turner especially hones in on how "economic language (and its extensions in law) exhaustively describes our world and, hence, becomes our world" (p. 58). Examples of this observation is how forests and ore become "natural resources", cows become "livestock" (pay close attention: live-stock), land becomes "property", wildlife becomes something to be "managed", etc. If we change our language, perhaps we will feel differently about the ways in which we interact with our ecological counterparts, perhaps even change those ways.

My ears attentive for more evidence of this phenomenon, I picked up on the following exchange at my friends' house, where they are starting a small urban farm, in regard to the ladies of the coop. I noticed the slight differences in the way the questions were phrased by different members of the house reflected subtle attitudinal differences towards their feathered friends:

"Are we getting any eggs?"

vs.

"Are the chickens giving any eggs?"

vs.

"Are the chickens laying?"

The first sees the chickens for their pure utility, and "we" are the important center around which the question revolves. The chickens themselves are not even mentioned, only their purpose (eggs) in relation to us. In the second, the (us) is still implied in the "giving", but the chickens are honored in being the subject of the question and acknowledged in their bestowing of eggs. The language of the third is perhaps the most respectful in that "we" are not in the sentence but rather the chickens as autonomous subjects fulfilling their natural cycles, which "we" only happen to benefit from.

If there is anything I have learned in my times of silence, it is how loose we can be with our tongues, how oft we speak without realizing the true implications of the arrangements of our words. Let us extend to those who provide our plates with food the courtesy of making them the subjects of our speech.

A Change of Gears

Having spent the beginning of this semester struggling to find a suitable day to continue my practice of a weekly vow of silence, I have come to a cross-roads in my thesis. There is no single day of my week in which it will be possible to spend the great majority of it in silence and observation, as I am pulled into the world of verbal communication seven days a week through my duties of two jobs (as a study abroad peer adviser at the Center for International Education and as a waitress), a volunteer internship at the Audubon Aquarium in which I am required to interact with guests, and classes in which my success hinges on my participation in group discussion. These difficulties only reinforce the reality that language is a necessity for those who wish to live in and keep up with such a fast-paced modern world that is sustained by the interactions of an increasingly expanding web of human (and other) individuals. Being social animals, each of our survival depends greatly upon our cooperation with the community, and this community has oozed beyond the mere local to become a global supernetwork. And it is not just for our survival, but fulfillment of needs beyond the physical that we must partake. We participate, or perish. This being so, it has come into my awareness through trial that perfect execution of my thesis at a time in which I am not able to withdraw from my social roles is not possible. I must change direction.

And so, I propose a new plan. If I cannot spend large blocks of time the length of a day in silence, I will have to with more intention carve out condensed periods of not-speech. And perhaps this juxtaposition of participation in spoken language and withdrawal in the same day for a given activity will be even more revealing of the truths I seek to uncover with my experience.

If you, the reader, has any recommendations of possible situations I could put myself in during which I would choose to be silent that would be non-detrimental to my work and school lives, I am, appropriately, all ears.

Intention>Language>Misinterpretation>Separation

I have been thinking a lot recently about language and intention. About how, specifically, some synaptic spark or flute of the muse gives rise to a Thought (amorphous) that is selected in the mind for external expression. And how it is intended that this Thought be expressed as it was when it rose in the thinker, that it remain pure and be understood by a receiver as such. And how, somewhere along the tangled lines of language, in the processes of expression and interpretation, it may inadvertently become Another Idea altogether through fumbles in articulation on the part of the speaker, or misunderstanding on the part of the listener. And this misunderstanding of the listener could be due to the possibility that the listener's brain has over time and shaped by experience not acquired the compatible concepts in its web of mental schema, and therefore substitutes relevant meaning by a slight adjustment to the message. The underlying question that begs my attentive excavation as I dawn upon my 8th hour of silence today is whether or not, or perhaps less severely, how often we understand exactly what was intended upon expression, and how often we just get "the gist". It is unsettling when it becomes apparent how in our everyday lives we are constantly and unwittingly engaged in the game of "telephone" with all we encounter, each of us subjectively filtering from the overwhelming mass of stimulus that bombards our sensibilities that which is personally pertinent. Through the existence of our separate sieves we work most efficiently by throwing aside our overlappings in perspective once confirmed and weeding through our differences to pin down a single granule of Truth (whose solidity is less and less certain the further we move past the post-modern mark of human-interpreted-History). While sharing perspective with others and receiving confirmation facilitates the warm-fuzzy comforts of human bonding, makes one at ease in his identity, and secure in the World, the hypothesis arises through this study of language that it is not our coinciding in interpretation and perspective but our divergences that are most revealing. We depart by the sheer impossibility that we could perceive the same stimulus and have the very same interpretation. It is into these cracks of difference I wish to fall and dig, into these gaps of understanding that disrupt our lulled illusion of continuity, these spaces we bump into that remind us of our distinct perceptions, and coax us to rummage through our toolboxes of words and explain ourSelves to the Others in repair. And perhaps we find we are missing the precise tool we need. What other ways can we convey our intentions, and connect?

A Bye-Month for Many Degrees of Separation and Reflection

When I went to Puerto Rico over winter break, I chose not to practice my vow of silence as to not complicate further language barriers I would inevitably encounter or make uncomfortable the family to which I was the guest. The said barriers threw me--were not what I had expected--as it turned out that mostly everyone I encountered in the country spoke English. This would have been a relief rather than an ironic obstacle had I not gone to practice my Spanish and keep my cognitive cogs well-oiled. The trip became an absurd game of me speaking to others in Spanish, and being responded to in English. I felt strangely disempowered and defeated in being forced to use my native language to save exchanges from awkward incongruence. I wondered if the insistence of others to speak English with me was a gesture of hospitality under the impression that this would make things easier for me, their own eagerness to practice their skills, an underestimation of mine, or (and) an automated response to blonde-hair signifier for "gringa". I was also working against the assumption of those that approached me first that being American (or shall I say more officially American than they), surely I did not share their language. And with this assumption, I also sensed a certain level of guardedness, for who does not feel a subtle but distinct instinct of separateness when in the proximity of someone with a different first language? And does that distance not diminish when two people of separate cultures discover with delight that they do in fact stand on a common ground and can communicate in the same tongue (though prejudices of an imperfect use of that language may reside)? In probing this phenomenon and recalling my experiences abroad in Chile, a handful of other South American countries, Costa Rica, and now Puerto Rico, I can only conclude most simply that language not only serves as a tool of communication between individuals (and media masses), but is also an important function of culture. Language allows a social group bound by this commonality a sense of union (in-group), while also creating an Other (out-group)--those who do not speak the language. And there is still a deeper sense of unity (real or perceived, and thus made real) in an understanding of the world amongst speakers of a common language. A popular practice amongst those who study linguistics is to take cues from a language's grammatical structure as clues to its culture's world-view. An oft-accounted example used as evidence for this theory is that in many languages of indigenous cultures, it is senseless to use the possessive adjectives "my", "his", "our", etc. for members of the family, the land, etc. because in their world-view, none of these subjects can be "owned". So I suppose learning another language must include learning another culture in a self-feeding loop, while simultaneously broadening (because it is impossible to replace) one's existing world-view. In my last "Lost in Translation" class, a course I am taking this semester with Professor Dewell, we were told that there is no true translation in any language that holds the same meaning as "blue". I took this to mean that because every word in every language is loaded with culturally-specific connotations, it is impossible to translate a word to imply exactly all the same things. There is a lurking worry that if a common human denominator of language does not shout its presence known, this material of study may lead one to feel that we live in a world of infinite fractions, each one a tiny mirror reflecting everything except itself.

Thought > Speech

Day Four

It was through a feeling of great inconvenience that today's revelations about the nature of language surfaced. Though in the past four weeks since the experiment began I had chosen to practice silence on a Monday or a Tuesday, this week I wavered, knowing that there was a friend I wanted to catch up with and that I had to speak with a professor about an exam. It only took a slight hesitation in commitment in the morning to seal the fate of those Monday and Tuesday days as days of speech. For if I do not begin the practice immediately in the morning when I wake up, framing the day so, I know it will be much more difficult to "shut myself up," and I won't be in the proper receptive state of mind. And I realize this rearrangement of the vow to my whimmed schedule in a sense may compromise some of that which I could find if I were to with strict discipline force the silence upon myself on the same day every week. For it has been in the obstacles that I have learned the most thus far. This is something to be considered for the weeks to come.

And so it fell on a Wednesday this week. I had figured that it wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience to remain silent this day because I had a paper to work on. I came to find that I was very much mistaken in this assumption. After not having spoken the entire day, I found writing to be extremely difficult. I was having an abnormally hard time formulating my thoughts coherently, and felt as if my thoughts had been replaced by static airwaves, my brain humming white noise. Even the voices around me in the library began to blend until they no longer consisted of words but strings of fluctuating tones interweaving through the air around me. I began to feel distressed, but upon becoming aware of the phenomenon more curious.

I felt that I "could not think" nor write because I had not been speaking. In very layman terms, in order to have an articulate mind I "needed to get the juices flowing" by talking. I recalled learning about Broca's area in a psychology class, which is the part of the brain responsible for speech production, but not the understanding of language. Perhaps in not speaking, I had "dammed" the area, stunting language production in the form of writing as well. The hypothesis was intriguing, but whatever the scientific truth, one thing was made certain: thought and speech are intricately bound, and words dominate both realms. But there is a remainder in thought with the removal of words, a residue of consciousness left behind in the sieve...Much in the same, there is a large percentage of communication to be accounted for (93%, according to a study at UCLA Santa Cruz) that is nonverbal. So what is it that is "left behind" after words pass through the filter of consciousness?