LANGUAGE IS PRONE TO MISUNDERSTANDING, BUT DO WE REALLY HAVE TO UNDERSTAND IT SO PRECISELY?
It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that the thing most perfect about language is exactly its imperfection.
The 52Hz whale had remained the Internet’s ultimate symbol of loneliness for decades: The piece of info on “the loneliest whale on the planet” were simply so captivating that up to hundreds of thousands of dollar were donated by a lot of people for the quest to find and film the said animal — even when the chance of success is so low it’s pretty much like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Although quite a few elaborate scientific articles had quoted the voices of various experts busting the myth on the “uniqueness”, “irregularity” and “loneliness” of the 52Hz whale, as well as criticizing the satirical newspapers for constantly fabricating fantasies that led public sentiments far overboard [1]… But the world chose to believe what they wanted to believe, and they had their own reason to do so.
The 52Hz whale was considered the loneliest whale individual on the planet because it produced sounds that had an audio frequency different from those of all other known species of whales, and thus, people believed that it were incapable of communicating to (or even receiving signals from) its own kind in the vastness of the sea — including the signals for breeding seasons. These pieces of information are just enough for us to, based on the experience we had in the human world, imagine for ourselves some much tear-jerking stories. Humans, from some faint vibration we picked up from the depth of the ocean, managed to visualize and develop sentiment for an animal individual that we hardly had any connection with. What lied beyond that sentiment was, perhaps, the sentiments for ourselves.
Just like how this story when retold by some people would often be paired with some exclamations along these lines: “The loneliest are the ones living among others speaking the same language, using the same sound frequency, and yet never be understood”.
Yeah, that remark might sound pretty awkward, but it certainly does inspire something and I think spending some work on it could bring us something pretty interesting.
1. Language was born with imperfection, and could develop thanks to its imperfection.
In our introductory article for the Week of language, we have discussed how the emergence and vigorous development of language were due to its deception-friendliness as a system [2]. Unlike the communication signal systems of humans, the language of humans also exists for the communication of unverifiable, non-existent events.
Human speech cannot be trusted just as it’s spoken, unlike the other types of signals of other animal species like birds’ tweets, tigers’ roars or dogs’ barks. The signals of other animal species are generally reliable, so we would always stay away from a snarling dog because he’s 100% not conveying friendliness. However, the reliability of animal species’ signal systems also limits its uses in communication to only a handful, such as threatening, alarming, attracting mates… On the other hand, human language’s freedom from the requirement of reliability has facilitated its extraordinary development toward further complexity. The reliability of speech doesn’t lie with the fact that it’s communicated, but instead with the methods created by humankind to ensure that it is trustable and reliable enough, among which are the moral system, scientific principles, ….
Due to this feature of language, we should keep in mind that language by nature does not require accuracy, so by expecting credibility from a piece of information just because it has been said or recorded, you could be living quite dangerously.
But despite how the lack of requirement for truthfulness had spurred its astronomical development, the development had yet to reach the point where it could depict any and everything. What could actually be expressed by language was just a tip of the iceberg, and the rest are the information under the categories of unspeakable” (unspeakable), “unimaginable”, etc.
The gaps in language, ironically enough, only emerged after the humankind’s quest to conceptualize virtually everything in the world. To put it simply, supposed that all objects and phenomena had been conceptualized into a collection of words and gathered in one gigantic dictionary, then what would become of the things not mentioned in the dictionary?
Writers, poets, philosophers, scientists, historians as well as pretty much the rest of the world had the desire to grasp the world by constructing a system of concepts but each time we put down something, we would also miss something else as well. The development of concepts and lexicon toward further sophistication both in terms of quantity and quality had on one hand developed great confidence in the wisdom of humankind, while on the other hand inspired growing doubts on our existing accomplishments. As we have managed to come a long way from where we began, people would start to wonder if there is any other path, or how far we currently got left from the final destination (if there is one)?
The trace of this could be clearly seen from the process how humankind’s knowledge system were developed based on the descriptions recorded by language, like the ancient original claims made about how the world emerge from one singular source, and then from 4 elements, or 2 certain polar forces, … has been expanded toward such complexity that its contemporary variations could hardly be fully unified, comprehended or visualized.
The world’s following a certain language system could also spur scholars from some certain schools of thought to question its capacity to depict the world. For example, if a word used to depict an object/phenomenon had to adhere with the principles of language, would it then have enough power to fully depict the target object, or would it only be able to depict something approximate to the said object but could never truly be that object itself, or even worse, would it just stop with a much makeshift generalization that barely scratches the surface?
For example, when describing to a person, there are a few principles that we have to follow. We have to define their biological gender, for example as female, so we would know she’s not a male. We have to define her race, for example as white, so we would know she’s not black or yellow. We have to define her age, for example as 20 y/o, so we would know she’s not in her 0–19 and also not in her 21 or older. Define a specific range of height and weight. Define her personality using a range of concepts used for depicting personality. And also her name… So along the way, the more details given, the better the listeners would be able to visualize the traits of the said person. Supposed that the people listening to the descriptions on these 20 y/o girl are familiar with her but at different levels, some would need just the name to know that it’s her, while some may need more details to recall who she is.
But the entire collection of information on this girl, even when have become incredibly detailed, could not represent the girl as a whole. When we present these data to a person not knowing this girl at all, they would not be able to see the girl as the person that she is, nor would they be able to reproduce an imagination of a person that closely resembles her. They would build up a makeshift reconstruction based on their own experience and understanding of what these descriptions could be representing, however generally these reconstructed versions would derail from the original on one level or another and certainly would never be able to physically match with the original. The same is true for every other object in the world that was conceptualized by humans.
And as a result, even when we can gain a fairly comprehensive and close-to-perfect perception of the physical world thanks to our perception capacity (we do have some blind spots, such as ultraviolet lights, but does that matter at all?), our cohabiting with other people using language as a communication medium could never be free of loss of information, due to both internal and external causes.
2. Room for ultimate privacy.
The interesting thing is, there are things that we would sometimes agree with even though normally we wouldn’t. For example, you would be so quick to agree that reading a summary of the plan of a stranger would be incredibly pointless, because it’s more than likely that we possess none of the background information needed to understand that summary. However, while we seem so well aware of the said story about the summary that it seems pointless to tell, we instead seem so oblivious about how much every pieces of language that we use daily resemble summaries, as the way we use them are almost so whimsically they feel like some scrappy note stickers that we leave for ourselves than something meant for another person.
“Where’s the ice cream”, asked your friend, and you would reply: “It’s in the fridge”. This is a piece of summarized information, and the friend’s understanding of it will depend on whether or not he knows what a fridge looks like and where it is placed. Luckily enough, most people would know what a fridge looks like and that it would often be placed somewhere in the kitchen.
“Where’s the bread”, asked your friend, and you would again reply: “On the second shelf of the cupboard”. This information would only be comprehensible for those who knew what a cupboard is, and some would have to ask again.
This also applies for a lot of the communication we made in our daily life, which were conversations that naturally rely even more on the participants’ background knowledge that what’s actually spoken or written. Back to the story of the summaries, you would still be able to understand the notes left by a long-time colleague if you have worked with him many times before, even when that same notes may sound like complete nonsense to passerby.
Therefore, apart from some more casual conversations like “the ice cream’s in the fridge” which only require widely known basic knowledge, other more particular conversations will require more specific knowledge. The conversations within a family, a company or between a couple , (in close relationships in general)… would always pack more implicit information than what’s actually said. Or in specific fields of expertise, for example in the fields of philosophy, individuals would also need a certain level of background knowledge to be able to understand what’s said by the other person.
To be more specific, whenever we say something, the language materials we used would not be able to convey everything imagined, thought or understood by us … and that unconveyed portion of information might sometimes even be completely inaccessible to anyone else. It’s an ultimate sense of privacy. Unlike a physical locked room which could certainly be broken in, the incompleteness of language can help us keep a lot of things for ourselves even when we are not intentionally doing so.
This is something incredibly crucial, much more so than anyone could ever imagine. It would be an absolute nuisance when everything we said or wrote could be understood by any other person. And on the other hand, it would be just as much a nuisance to always be able to fully understand everything meant by others just from what they said or wrote. Language is currently the only medium through which a brain could work to understand another brain, and the incompletion of language serves to ensure that no means could be used to reliably exhaustively grasp a person’s mind.
On a larger scale, for example in communication within social groups, the fact that the language used are mostly summaries also helped to generate unique cultures that could only be understood among the groups. The incompleteness of what’s speakable leaves room for what’s unspeakable, as well as for the non-verbal elements to help conversations among subcultures be more private and interesting, even when they employ that communication materials in their communication outside of the group.
3. Room for ultimate freedom.
As we mentioned in Part 1, the dogs’ barks are reliable because they have to commit a lot to make those sounds, but speech is not even nearly as trustworthy when spoken. This means we can freely speak a lot of things without being bound by an instinct or an obligation to tell only the truth. It’s like we’re gifted with a Lego set with unlimited pieces: Even when not all of the pieces would be helpful, we have to admit that mathematically the chance for us to produce a meaningful shape from that set would be a lot higher than that when we use a Lego set with limited pieces.
This freedom ensures that language would never hit a limit or become obsolete even after endless time. Theory, you indeed can always produce sentences that have never been said by anyone before and become able to understand meanings that no one else has ever understood. This feature allows humans to freely use language to, over time, present more and more profoundly their inner thoughts and describe the external world in a more vivid and creative way. What’s more, misunderstandings could also create the window for emergence of new ideas from existing theoretical basis, which is common for academic fields such as philosophy.
It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that the thing most perfect about language is exactly its imperfection. Thanks to it, the first barely coherent speech of humankind at its dawn was able to develop into the nowadays incredibly sophisticated language while having yet to hit its own limit. The ambiguity of language not only did not lead the ideologies of humankind astray, but instead inspire humans to become more careful in listening to others and thus in turns help our capacity for reflection and deep thinking to advance to even greater heights.
And indeed, even when language is free by nature, and speech is unlimited, over time we have managed to develop many systems to help control the reliability of claims. While these systems helped to curb lengthy, ambiguous and deceptive speech, it did so at the cost of reduced liberty and creativity. For example, in adoption of scientific standards and principles, the use of standardized lexicon and grammar cause the style of writing to become unified and free of unnecessary romanticization. But even then, in the designing of these systems, humankind would always be clever enough to leave some room for chaos, which could be necessary for the emergence of many things.
4. Be careful what you wish for.
The reason for some people to wish to be understood by others was that a lot of trouble in life can stem from misunderstandings. Between employers and employees, parents and children, clients and service providers, or couples … constant misunderstandings can break out even when they don’t intentionally mean to create them, and even tread very carefully when listening to each other in order for them to not happen. However, misunderstandings could also be limited without spoken language being more transparent, by the adoption of a more comprehensive and professional set of rules for conversation.
The wish “I wish they understood me”, if come true, would more than likely lead to wish makers’ absolute suffering, because sometimes ambiguity could be doing a lot more help for them than they realize. For example, in a social conversation, sometimes the other people’s not being able to understand everything we say can be of huge help, as it help people avoid the tension from contradictory beliefs or awkwardness. It’s precisely thanks to the ambiguity of language that we could engage in conversation without having to wear on our sleeves every bit of our ways of thinking or innermost emotions.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger even went as far as suggesting that bad pronunciation could actually be an advantage, because “in American society, you should never underestimate the advantage of incomprehensible things”. The ambiguity and incoherence of a piece of speech could actually put the speaker in a much more secured position than that of someone who always has to make highly creditable claims, while the listener has the freedom to freely contemplate around what they have heard.
But of course, the comprehensive, correct and reliable communication of information is still an absolute necessity for many aspects of life. But what really makes us feel the need for it is exactly the ubiquitous ambiguity in the world we live in.
This ambiguity sometimes could be the finest bastion for freedom, privacy and creativity. The time will come when you realize how important it truly is.
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References:
[1] http://www.bbc.com/.../20150415-the-loneliest-whale-in...
[2] https://www.facebook.com/.../a.19620070.../2873799376234143/
- Further Reading:
https://aeon.co/.../why-language-remains-the-most...
https://aeon.co/.../the-unexpected-benefits-of-getting...
https://aeon.co/.../who-needs-a-perfect-language-its...
https://aeon.co/.../why-meaning-is-more-sunken-into-words...
