The Power of Language Essay
The Power of Language Essay
Language wields immense power over humanity. People from all over the world travel great distances
with their words. The art of language bridges cultures and borders to bring ideas and messages near
and far. However language is not alone in our difference from the animal kingdom.
Language belongs to the great distribution of similarities and signatures. Consequently, it must be
examined as a matter of nature itself. Language is not what it is, because it has a meaning. Its
representative content does not play any role at all. The original form is given by God.
The sheer gravity of such a claim, that a word to classify a thing, and definitions of such a thing, are
necessary for the thing’s existence seems to fight against our minds. Perhaps this is because we feel
the truth in this claim, and the idea that existence and non-existence can be determined by just a word
frightens us. But this is an entirely justified assumption, as supported by Foucault’s analysis of how
through the careful subjugation of our sexual vocabulary, our very conceptions of sexuality were
drastically altered.
According to Foucault, every language was considered a discourse, this term refers to a historically
and culturally specific set of rules for organizing and producing different forms of knowledge. It is not a
matter of external determinations being imposed on people’s thought, rather it is a matter of rules
which, a bit like the grammar of a language, allow certain statements to be made.
Language use is a remarkable fact about human beings. The role of language as a vehicle of thought
enables human thinking to be as complex and varied as it is. With language one can describe the past
or speculate about the future and so deliberate and plan in the light of one’s beliefs about how things
stand, where the reason is important role in the language.
Foucault criticizes the notion that reason is synonymous with truth and that it offers the solution to all
social problems. He notes that repressive systems of social control are usually highly rational. The
notions of rationality and irrationality, as they were posed by the Frankfurt School, became a
fashionable topic of discussion in the late 1970s. In this context Foucault notes the dangers of
describing reason as the enemy and the equal danger of claiming that any criticism of rationality leads
to irrationality.
Words are simply vehicles for ideas, which have an independent, self-sustaining existence. To use
another metaphor, although words may be the midwives of ideas, their true parents are experience
and reason. Leibniz suggested the same model, writing that “languages are the best mirror of the
human mind.”
On the other hand, Maturana emphasizes that the lived experience gives de language an
epistemological covering, Where language should focus on how the relational dynamics of linguistic
interactions triggers changes in the dynamics of the nervous system and the organism as a whole,
and how the linguistic observer distinguishes and describes their reciprocal causality in terms of mind,
intelligence, reason and self-awareness.
Maturana and Varela (1992) pointed that a living system has to be able to retain its identity and
organization (autopoiesis), and its operational congruence, with the medium in which a system exists.
Within this framework, Maturana and Varela consider that cognition is what living systems do in
interaction with their environment, and, like other essential biological processes, cognition is simply
something a living system does and cannot fail to do, so long as it lives (Lyon, 2004;Maturana &
Varela, 1980).
Language is an important input for our intellectuals now, for that response, although in a large
percentage, and in the interaction of thought, relationship, communication, etc. (We are our language,
this evolves with us, it is an important part of us). Different languages ??provide enrichment because,
for example, there is more diversity about interpretations of reality, and this is good for evolution, for
example. A man / woman cannot master all human knowledge, all the details of all brains, but he can
look for ways to understand in a similar language, for all, the basis for finding or understanding
everyone else.
One of the greatest challenges facing any philosophical system is the construction of a language that
can reliably analyze reality according to logical criteria. If philosophy is to teach us any truth, it must
speak in a language that we can understand, or it will remain a meaningless string of symbols. The
practical need to express logical arguments in human language, however, exposes us to the danger of
conflating grammatical and logical relationships. Even individual terms may distort our analysis, since
many of our words were coined from casual intuition, without concern for logical or philosophical rigor.
If we are to use language for logical argument, we cannot accept it as is, but must bring it into
conformity with clearly intelligible logical principles.
But we are evolving. Language needs so many words to explain this, for example, and exposing
feelings more quickly is possible in the future. (Because we are evolving, and at least at all times we
need to expose feelings and data that we need to transform in order to communicate with others).
It follows that the nature of the language, when its design characteristics and internal structure are
taken into account, is not as it is supposed to be. That is, language makes sense with outsourcing (in
sound, signs, etc.); they are not, combinations of sound and meaning structured for communicative
efficiency. Speech, signs or any other type of outsourcing are secondary properties of language.
The fundamental property of language is the internal construction of many indefinite expressions
through a generative procedure that produces a unique human perspective on the world. It is in this
sense that language is an instrument of thought; it provides us with a unique way of structuring the
world around us, which we use for various purposes, such as thinking and talking about the world.