I WANT NO PART OF “LANGUAGE OWNERSHIP”

It’s fair to suggest that, from the very first day of our existence as a species, we have always sought to make our existence easier, or just to seek to enable our own comprehension of what is happening to us and our peers and to organise our thoughts – our lives as they really are (not just as we define them), no less. After all, what else could serve as a basis for a rudimentary understanding not only of “what we should do”, but also a sense of destiny? That’s life.

That said, I dare add that, in the modern day, even though we have now developed more than one vaccine for Covid-19, the burden imposed by the pandemic is hardly abating well: there have now been reports of a new strain in Brazil, as well as in the UK (and South Africa). Call me pessimistic but I can fully imagine this whole thing giving rise to a new massive pernicious wave of something else across the globe: one defined by despair and cynicism in equal measure. I’m talking about social division reaching new heights; in particular, a mass tendency to be altogether less trusting and to maintain wholly negative assumptions against one’s better judgement. It’s all a question of what loss there will be as a result of this. Sorry, but if all you do out of habit is obsess over the ceaseless question of “the worst to come”, what actually is the worst that could happen in your case?

…What are you really going to do right now?

But I wrote this blog as a professional translator – a proud linguist ever preoccupied with the subject of language, and what it’s for i.e. communication… and, indeed understanding. And – sure as fate – even the most capable of us are dependent on language to help us organise our thoughts and make plans in life, whether or not they are ultimately to achieve anything for the greater good. Of course, “things aren’t always that simple”. So check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RMwjaZouNY 4:24. “Someone who says what they think, thinks about what they say.” I couldn’t have put it better myself, even though this video clearly does not have language, the field I work in, as a key theme… and all the better for it!

Now, it’s fine to express your take on certain aspects of a given language – just look at where it got that Finnish comedian Ismo Leikola. And it’s fine to invent new language for the sake of convenience and more, which might explain why Urban Dictionary has grown as much as it has both in scope and popularity. But there’s something about sentimental attachment to individual shreds of verbal expression that rubs me the wrong way (and I’m fully aware of the fact that I leave this point nondescript).

Picture this scenario: an unhappy child is driven to hiding among trees and shrubbery, and finds an abandoned stuffed toy there; the child agrees to take this stuffed toy and bond with it – which is by no means unlikely when there’s a fair chance that the stuffed toy itself is in a depressing state. In this sense, the child agrees to become the toy’s new “owner”… and in all likelihood to just keep the whole affair unknown to anyone else; after all, the rest of us just wouldn’t understand. Before long the stuffed toy, now completely detached from its past life with whomever its last owner was, acquires a whole new name and indeed a whole new identity, at least in the mind of the child who found it, who has done nothing wrong in this regard. However, lots of us have seen how toys can have minds of their own in the Toy Story films (that’s just one example); it all begs one question: if toys really did come to life, imagine the differences between a child’s attachment to a toy and a toy’s attachment to a child. It’s all open to imagination rather than prediction, and it’s best that one accept it as such.

Then there’s language. All of us need it, including for all manner of scenarios we could never be prepared for; but no matter who you are (or who you think you are), whether you’re ambitious or you’re more inclined to keep your head down and call yourself humble, whether you have many friends or you prefer to keep a low social profile, whether you’re motivated more by kindness or by a desire for vengeance, I will declare that it pays to consider that it’s only a matter of time before you next find yourself stopped in your tracks by none other than some discovery or lightbulb moment grounded in language in some way – generally a lexical item that helps you wake up to something or change your mind about something.

But language can end up warped, and our understanding and wisdom suffer as a result. My point is that people just come across new expressions, and new examples of use of language, all the time, and that’s fine, but I’m here to put forth and maintain my claim that there is such a thing as taking episodes of this to heart too much, out of no more than “feelings”, or being only too attached to what it brings to your mind on an intimate and sentimental level. For this has the capacity to impede understanding of what is more important in the real world, and preclude wisdom, which basically can only be a bad thing. But what do the worst possible consequences of it include, exactly? You tell me.

What I’m trying to say is that, when we acquire or discover new language which we personally find meaningful in a big way, and treasure this new knowledge as something positive, we shouldn’t actually treat it as something we own. Language is not something to be “possessed”, and it should be regarded as such. Especially since the very significance of some aspect of language – essentially a new word or phrase – can be susceptible to change at any time; it’s not just another thing we own, the significance of which we expect will only change if we decide that it is to be so. They say language is a living thing for a reason. What I’m really talking about is the idea of clinging to existing personal/intimate ideas that one stubbornly maintains as something connected to individual fragments of language for the sake of some false sense of comfort or sanctuary.

It’s basically about falling into the trap of succumbing to lesser thinking, all born of one’s own mentality, and how this relates to the language one uses (even when they aren’t actually communicating in it). Think about the story of the Tower of Babel. Call the people’s desire to build such a thing just to prove that they didn’t need God arrogant if you want, but look how far we have developed as a species since we were cavemen, even if we do speak different languages! It could never have happened without millennia of determined and courageous thinking which is anything but self-centred; the masses maintaining belief in the wonder of cooperation. What I am trying to discourage here is an excess of self-centred ideas tied to the language that we use, as it’s instrumental in inhibiting accomplishment for the greater good.

I’ll end this by saying that this brings me to this point I want to make about swearing. There are some people who really go out of their way to let others know how offended by swearing they are (even in cases where swear words are clearly not being used to insult someone or otherwise in aggression), for no more than out of how averse they personally are to swear words. Trust me, I can understand this. I’m sold on the idea that there is such a thing as an underlying fear of language accepted as vulgar, for reasons far more serious than being momentarily disgusted by it. To most people, popularised vulgarity does not give people licence to show the worst of themselves, nor should it. Even so, it is fair to say that swearing can pass for language of premature contempt and noxious ignorance, which can be enough to promote lowered bars; in that sense, while I will insist that no-one “owns” language, I can buy into the idea that language can “own” a person, with negative consequences to follow and not just in the scope of the personal situation of the one it “owns”. I would say “just a thought” at this point, but seriously, thoughts can be powerful things. And that is why I want no part of “language ownership”.