A Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Sixty-Seven

The past few days, as regular readers know, I've been exploring certain ideas to do with language, and in particular with concepts related to belief and disbelief in relation to fictional works.  In considering this, I have found myself thinking about language itself in ways that alter how I conceive of it, and, yet, which seem, when I consider them, quite apparent.  

Consider what language is, at root.  Now, the common answer is to consider it as a tool of communication, but it is also clear, upon a moments reflection, that language is used far more internally than externally.  Most of our thoughts, and certainly our conscious considerations, exist in language.  Looking around a room, noticing objects, the words for that name what I see enter my mind, even if not as a direct dialogue within me, they are present.  It is not the language I experience in communication with others that is the primary interaction I have with words, and I suspect this to be true for most everyone.  I could, of course, be wrong about this, but I know that their is a huge self-help industry in teaching people to quiet or change the voices they hear in their heads, to alter the language they use to speak to their own mind, and I know, as well, that conscious thought is believed by many scientists to be a function of language, to exist within the frame of language itself, so I feel safe betting that most people have a robust inner dialogue that probably outweighs their other interactions with words.

If this is the case, it is clear that the primary function of language is not in our ability to speak with each other, but in the way it is used within our own minds.  Language is a tool of mental processing, a way of organizing the information we experience in the world and processing it.  The ability to use language as a medium for sharing thoughts is a result of this reality, and relies on the individuals communicating each having a robust linguistic map in their mind.  In other words, a user of a language cannot communicate until after they have integrated it, to some extent, into their mind.  It may be possible to use a word or two, but until one has a bit of a mental model for the language, even if it is rudimentary, all one can do is puppet specific phrases, or translate sentences without real consideration or understanding.  One has to know the word in relationship to the world, not just as an abstract thing in the language.  Of course, this is obvious, to an extent, as it is saying, "one needs to know a word to use it," but I do not mean it in that sense alone, but also in the sense that their is a conception that the word touches, but that conception exists beyond language.  The word is the symbol, and the user of the language needs to know the meaning of each symbol and how to fit it in with the others being used, and the mastery of that process is internal before it becomes communication.  This is why those learning a second language often desire to think in that language: because they know otherwise, they are still just speaking in their original language with a different vocabulary.

How does it change the act of writing when one considers language in these terms?  For me, part of the power of this idea is that it opens up a different way of viewing the act of writing and the act of reading by representing that we are not, when we write, doing something analogous to speaking, but are actually engaging a process that is internal, the process of using language in our own minds, of thinking about the world, considering it consciously.  When I write, I am not merely saying a thing on paper, but am presenting ideas through the same symbols you use when coming up with them for yourself.