Week 10: The Fiction of Ideas
What ideas or mind experiments were explored in the works you read for this week? What were some of the implications or consequences of those ideas for those of us living today?
In Samuel R. Delaney's Babel-17, the novel I read for this week, the plot surrounds Rydra Wong, a famous poet in multiple galaxies and has linguistic talents. She is recruited by the government to decipher an alien code that turns out to be an entire language that she is desperate to learn more about. The ideas of language and communication is explored in Delaney's work as Rydra explains that one made up word can have a long and complicated meaning and discusses how there might not be a word to describe an exact feeling or meaning. This translates to modern culture as words do not translate directly or with the same emotion into another language. Sometimes it takes away the full meaning or expressiveness of the term. Being trilingual myself, even I struggle with translating certain terms into another language when I'm talking to my friends in English and have to translate it from Cantonese or Mandarin. This makes it easy for people to misinterpret words and phrases, that could possibly make a message upsetting or offensive when it wasn’t intended to be. Additionally, Rydra explains how her language is a form of expression, and can be beautiful if people knew how to express themselves through words, "I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings that they can't express, and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn't hurt any more: that's my poem. I know what they want to say, and I say it for them." In modern day, I believe this is still true with language. Oftentimes, people take away or neglect the weight of words and throw around offensive or meaningful words without a second thought. It takes away the beauty and purpose of the word or phrase because it’s been misused. I believe this concept also applies to transforming other people’s ideas and thoughts and making it into art. Since artists aid people in visualizing their thoughts, emotions and concepts that they might not be able to comprehend or put into words or visuals themselves.
In Samuel R. Delaney's Babel-17, the novel I read for this week, the plot surrounds Rydra Wong, a famous poet in multiple galaxies and has linguistic talents. She is recruited by the government to decipher an alien code that turns out to be an entire language that she is desperate to learn more about. The ideas of language and communication is explored in Delaney's work as Rydra explains that one made up word can have a long and complicated meaning and discusses how there might not be a word to describe an exact feeling or meaning. This translates to modern culture as words do not translate directly or with the same emotion into another language. Sometimes it takes away the full meaning or expressiveness of the term. Being trilingual myself, even I struggle with translating certain terms into another language when I'm talking to my friends in English and have to translate it from Cantonese or Mandarin. This makes it easy for people to misinterpret words and phrases, that could possibly make a message upsetting or offensive when it wasn’t intended to be. Additionally, Rydra explains how her language is a form of expression, and can be beautiful if people knew how to express themselves through words, "I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings that they can't express, and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn't hurt any more: that's my poem. I know what they want to say, and I say it for them." In modern day, I believe this is still true with language. Oftentimes, people take away or neglect the weight of words and throw around offensive or meaningful words without a second thought. It takes away the beauty and purpose of the word or phrase because it’s been misused. I believe this concept also applies to transforming other people’s ideas and thoughts and making it into art. Since artists aid people in visualizing their thoughts, emotions and concepts that they might not be able to comprehend or put into words or visuals themselves.
Comments
Post a Comment