i am working on my annotated bibliography for australian and new zealand cinemas and i suddenly realized (anew, it seems, but with more significance) that language is ALIVE. i mean, alive and KICKING. it's active. i am specifically thinking about this on three different levels:

1) language is alive and active and kicking in the sense of our use of words. take, for example, these two expressions: "in contrast", and "in comparison". as soon as you say, in a text, "in contrast to", you are summoning the sharpness of light against dark (think film noir), you are summoning light and darkness to refract against each other within the ideas you are discussing. when you say "in comparison" in a text, you are mixing two or more ideas together, thoroughly, and allowing the differences and similarities within those ideas rise to the surface. in this sense language seems to me incredibly active.

2) language is alive and kicking in the way it actively connects us. it formulates our identities, our cultures, our specificities, our ability to relate to each other, because we share common languages, common meanings, common lexicons. language swirls around us, existing in its own power because WE exist to give it life, and yet, in a peculiar symbiotic-dependent relationship, language constructs us in its very being.

3) in this sense i am thinking about languages as texts. "language" in a bigger sense of the word, i.e. the language of novels, or short stories, or musical scores, or films. in this sense language is alive in that it allows us to construct memories, complex memories, of who we are and what we do and what our particular culture and heritage is about. with languages as texts, we are able to remember the past, live in the present, and project ourselves into the future.

this is so cool. i hope it develops well into my essay. sigh. why didn't i pursue structural linguistics? (post-structural linguistics? why don't i spend quality time with de saussure, kristeva, and all those other language theorists???? i LOVE thinking about language this way. it seems so directly CONNECTED to the outside world, and it makes sense to me to think about the world in those terms.)

i hope you enjoy the Mishka Narrative i posted below earlier today ;) she really is one priceless sophisticat (grin)

Labels: language