November 8, 2005
Language
Toni Morrison, the American author, on receiving her Nobel Prize for Literature, spoke of her vocation to writing as “word work.”
It is words, she suggested, that empower meditation, that “fend off the scariness of things with no names,” and that ease the burden of oppression. In the end, she continued, it is words that enable us to make some sense of our existence by allowing us to stand aside to narrate it. Ms Morrison’s clear insistence on the value of language seems pointedly appropriate in the midst of the current widespread epidemic of violence and its bedfellow illiteracy, for nothing makes less sense of our existence more thoroughly. Both strike at the very ground of security. In their presence, no person is safe, for every person is homeless. Nameless by its very nature, violence respects neither victim nor perpetrator, and there is no more oppressive burden than a fear one cannot name.
Without a level of maturity that achieves an appreciation for and a facility of language and all the other symbols available to us for naming, we simply cannot stand aside and gain perspective on our stories. That we lack this as a people is nowhere more apparent than in our systematic removal of the humanities from public education. We chortle when reminded that any “C” student can become president of the United States. It should be obvious by now that we do so at our peril. The subsequent loss of such values and the language skills necessary to interpret them is a careless and abusive violence in itself that goes largely unnoticed. If we teach such subjects at all, we’re only allowed to teach about them, rather than explore their meaning and possible place for us.
Such exploration often leads to the discovery (and rediscovery for some) of the beauty and power of myth and of the irony of human ambiguity, one value of which lies in the capacity to spare us from taking ourselves so literally — and consequently, so seriously. Compare, for example, what happens when the literal mind that often equates myth with falsehood takes charge and all is hardened into fact, moral code, and program. The disputations and legalistic preoccupations of a good part of our discourse can be attributed in no small part to such a mind’s typical failure to appreciate the perspective available through humanistic studies.
Some of the most remarkable science of our time is the current endeavor to discover the complete genetic blueprint for the over l00,000 genes that make up the DNA of a human being. For the accomplishment of this goal, scientists not so coincidentally approach DNA as a “language” with which to “tell” the human “story.” They speak of their research as “parsing” to find the “runes.” The purpose of all this, as in any responsible use of language, is not only to understand by naming, but in so doing, to heal, to make whole.
The irony of these noble motives and the considerable investment required to implement them seems lost on us. All the while we’re perfecting our biology, we’re allowing the obvious mystery of its presence and for which mystery it just may be the occasion for understanding to go untended. Language makes us human. Without it, how would we ever have thought of DNA, let alone become able to understand and use its “syntax”?
Language is reality. Whatever is without language is as unknowable as the answer to the question of how we would feel had we never been born. Try, if you will, to argue that “a picture is worth a thousand words” by using only a photograph or a painting.
Madeleine L’Engle, another brilliant story teller, writes of a friend who despaired of seeking help for her addiction elsewhere, especially in the church, and turned to the comfort of a twelve-step program. When asked why, her friend replied, “Because this program knows who is the enemy.” Tony Morrison might have said, because it “fends off the scariness of things with no names.”
Any who aspire to be responsible stewards of human being know that without words to name our fears, we remain subject to the illiteracy of violence in all its manifestations, and we can never be able to “stand aside to narrate our existence.” This is not only especially true for our vocation, but also for those with whom we engage in the healing art of listening and telling. Even Friedrich Nietzsche, a most unlikely exegete for any comfort in matters such as these, once reminded us in what seemed a moment of despair, “I fear that we will never get rid of God so long as we have grammar.”