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