Of the inadequacies of Language

I was just thinking without a set agenda in mind… :) Basically letting my mind go where it would and trying to just catalogue the various topics or threads it came up with… I ended up reflecting on the inadequacies of language as we know it or use it…

It often comes to the point that language fails to convey the meaning we wish to. It might conceivably be sufficient to convey your thoughts since most of us think using words. However I have frequently felt that it is definitely limited in its ability to express feelings or states of mind. I am not speaking from a technical perspective… It is quite possible I suppose that words and expressions exist that would fill that gap in my knowledge.

However academically speaking, the fact that a major part of communication on an interpersonal level is limited to language would imply that we would always receive less information than is available for communication. The amount of meaning which we fail to grasp is I suppose somewhat related to the quality of the equipment responsible for its reception as well as to the transmission equipment. (I know this is a slightly unusual line of thought… not in the sense that no one else has thought of it but that we usually don’t analyse the very process of communication via language.)

Anyway what I meant by that horribly technical sounding sentence was that as in science or engineering fields, we talk of loss of data due to limitations of transmitter, communicating channel and receiver. Similarly, we can draw quite close parallels with the way we use language. Some limitations are there as to how well the person wishing to communicate a message can encode it to the language of communication. The second is the limitation of language itself. The third limitation is regarding how well the receiver of the said message understands it.

I personally think that since we have been trained since our childhood about the importance of putting words to our thoughts and feelings, we start to intrinsically link them together. We learn to think in words. Whatever part of the thought process lies outside the purview of the words of any language that we know is termed as hunches or intuition. (Whatever I talk about here is my personal opinion, and in no way substantiated by any proofs, social, medical or scientific whatsoever. :) )

What I’m trying to say is that what we term as intuition or hunches might just be thought processes or leaps of deduction that utilize data that is not limited by language (or the usual means by which our brains accept information) or that can not be described by means of language. A widely accepted concept is that of learning things with your body. Ask a top performer of any field to explain to another how he manages to do certain basic things and the chances are quite high that he would not be able to explain it to your satisfaction. This is especially true of fields which rely on instincts as well as analysis, like sports, but it is the same for any highly developed discipline.

Now why is it that language just plain fails to convey or even capture such a major part of our feelings. I'm not saying it fails to grasp the greater percentage, just that what it does fail to grasp is not a trivial part of the whole universe of feelings.

And of course different languages deal with different concepts with varying degrees of success.

However I'm specifically talking about English here, since it is the language I most often end up thinking in. I often end up feeling limited by its capacity to convey things... It is probably just me at this stage... I probably need to be much more proficient than I currently am... But I still think that however proficioent you are, you can reach a point where words fail you, where language fails you. As a small example consider the times when you think visually.. or in moving images... instead of words or logic.. it's much more difficult to bind those thoughts to the constraints of language. Also if you try to recall an experience in words... there are always aspects you just can not put in words.

Maybe it's time for a research into languages which would maybe extend their existing range? :) Or maybe I've gone slightly mad :D

anyways sayonara

Introducing myself n my blog :)

Most of you already know at least the bare details about me... but for those who claim to have forgotten or for those who by some mischance have stumbled upon these scribbles, here goes. :)

I'm a gal currently studying (or at least pretending to :) ) in IIT Roorkee. Some xyz branch... blah blah blah

Other than that... I am an aries, so obviously I have a rather too high opinion of myself, a very short temper, and an even shorter attention span for uninteresting things. And I like fattebaazi :) For those unfamiliar with the term, it basically means I can't stick to the bare bones of reality most of the time.. so I embellish it a little here n there, or I try and stir things up a little if they are being too mundane... Nothing serious.. just enough to make it interesting :)

Yet it all depends on my mood at any given moment... However the one thing I like more than most others is plain thinking. You might well ask what kind of an interest that! let me clarify... I try not to think about work as far as I can help myself. Nor do I willingly waste my thoughts on politics; the sorry state of world affairs; the life and loves of various celebrities, alive or dead; and a thousand other uninteresting topics.

What doesn't interest me might be important, but I'd still not willingly think about it in my spare time. Au contraire, what I think about might be trivial in the extreme... but it's what I do best. :) Or rather, being more honest it's something I really can't help.

Now I'm not sure how I ended up here but what I started out with was the intention of introducing myself and my blog. ( :) This is going to be a very common phenomenon... I digress like crazy... :) ) So I think I've talked about myself more than anyone was actually interested in and so I'd better move on to the blog and its purpose.

I envision this as a place where I can just go on about the things that strike me... What is a public blog afterall? It's a way to share your thoughts with those you know and who know you. It's a way to let the writer in you have a little freedom to get carried away without the constraints of always having to write upon a predefined topic with a predefined objective in mind... That's what happens in all the so called humanities classes... Fattebaazi hoti hai... But it's still not supposed to be random in nature :)

Now that said... I think it's more than enough to be getting on with... Hopefully this spurt of interest will not dry out :)

Sayonara