Chapter 54
Language and speech; words, grammar, translation and the use and abuse of words.
681 passages · 232 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Language is the medium in which every other idea in these books is carried, and so it is the one the authors find hardest to stand outside. The idea covers speech and its origin, the nature of words and how they signify, the confusions words breed, the morals of talk and silence, the limits of expression, style and diction, the learning and translating of tongues, and the history of particular languages. It is a great idea for the Harvard Classics because nearly every kind of writer here meets it. The philosopher meets it when he asks what a name is. The poet asks what diction verse should use, the translator what survives the passage between tongues, the explorer how to speak with strangers, and the moralist when the tongue should be held. Sidney calls speech the greatest gift after reason1. Swift calls conversation the great distinction between men and brutes2. Both suppose that in examining language we examine ourselves.
The first question is what sets speech apart. Descartes makes it his first test separating men from machines and beasts. A machine might utter words, but it cannot arrange them to answer whatever is said, and deaf-mutes invent signs to declare their thoughts3. True speech, he holds, differs from the natural signs of passion that animals and automata can imitate4. Burke draws the line from the other side: natural cries are understood even from unfamiliar animals precisely because, unlike language, they are not arbitrary5. Coleridge too names articulate speech as what distinguishes man from nature and the brute6. Adam Smith wonders whether exchange itself follows from reason and speech, since no animal’s cry signifies “mine” and “yours”7. Hobbes ties all the faculties peculiar to man to the invention of words8,9. The travellers complicate the boundary, however. Darwin hears the Fuegian tongue as scarcely articulate, yet finds the Fuegians repeating every English word with perfect correctness10. Dana dismisses an Indian language as brutish11, a judgment that tells more about the hearer than about the speech.
How language began divides the sacred from the conjectural. Herodotus tells of Psammetichos isolating two children to learn which word nature prompts first; he judged the Phrygians oldest when they said the Phrygian word for bread12. The Koran says God taught man plain speech13. Milton’s Adam finds he can speak at once and name what he sees14,15. Hobbes, though he calls speech the most noble invention, grants that God taught Adam names16. Dante’s Adam says his original tongue was extinct before Babel: speech is natural, but its forms change with usage as leaves change on a branch17. Rousseau makes the origin a genuine puzzle. Speech seems to need thought and thought speech; Condillac presupposed the very society that language was to explain18,19. Rousseau traces a path from the natural cry through gesture and imitative sound to instituted signs and abstract words20,21, yet he doubts that language could arise by human means at all22. The diversity of tongues the Bible ascribes to Babel, which Milton renders as a jangle of unknown words23. Dante’s Nimrod babbles unintelligibly, as every tongue is meaningless to the others24. Pentecost reverses the curse, for each nation hears the apostles in its own language25, and Bacon echoes that miracle in New Atlantis26. Whatever happened at the beginning, each child repeats the acquisition. Augustine recalls learning words by watching gestures, which he calls the natural language of all nations27, and learning among caresses what schoolroom Greek denied him28. Locke holds that a child learns any language by being talked to29.
On what words are, the moderns tend toward convention. Hobbes makes names marks for remembrance and counters for reckoning30,31. Words, he says, are wise men’s counters but the money of fools32, and even the grammatical moods are arbitrary signs, not certain marks of passion33. Berkeley calls words of arbitrary imposition and custom the rule of language34,35. Pascal allows names to be freely imposed, provided one name is not given to two things36. Augustine had already seen that the thing signified is neither Greek nor Latin37,38. The controversy deepens when names seem to create the things they name. In the Buddhist dialogue “chariot” is an empty sound, a convenient designation for parts with no real whole behind it39,40. Berkeley likewise blames philosophers for building on words the vulgar framed for convenience41. Against such views stands the older intuition that a name holds power over what it names. Faust thinks names like “Liar” display a nature42, though he elsewhere calls names mere sound and smoke43. Odysseus escapes by calling himself Noman44,45. The manikin of the Grimms is undone once his name is spoken46. Don Quixote labours over names fit for his new estate47,48. Emerson praises English place names for the history they carry, against meaningless American ones49, while Thoreau thinks the truest names are nicknames50.
Burke adds a theory that cuts against the plain view of words as tokens of ideas. Through habit, he argues, words for virtue, honour and the like move us without raising any image of what they stand for51,52,53. His evidence is that blind men such as Blacklock and Saunderson use visual words to good effect54,55. Hence poetry’s power lies in affecting words rather than pictures56,57.
If words move apart from ideas, they can also mislead apart from ideas. Hobbes lists the abuses: inconstant meaning, metaphor, and lying30. Contradictory compounds coined by schoolmen, such as “incorporeal body,” he dismisses as mere sound58, and he calls insignificant speech a kind of madness59. Berkeley calls words without ideas jargon60. Hume finds that “power” and “force” carry loose meanings that conceal our ignorance61, and that controversies often turn on words rather than things62. Goethe’s devil puts it satirically: where ideas fail, a word appears63. Comedy makes the same point through Jonson’s alchemists64 and Manzoni’s curate, whose “latinorum” Renzo refuses65,66. The remedy, from Confucius to the moderns, is right names. Confucius warns that if names are not right, affairs fail and law decays67. Hobbes wants exact definitions to purge ambiguity68. Smith dissolves the paradox about money and revenue by exposing an ambiguous expression69,70. Pasteur demands careful nomenclature71, yet he defends vague terms like “germ” over an arbitrary precision about organisms poorly known72. Marshall, interpreting the Constitution, denies that “necessary” has one fixed sense and reads it by context and intention73. Ruskin warns that masked words nobody understands wield deadly power, and that men will die for them74.
Some abuses are deliberate. Sydney Smith exposes how vague terms like “order” and “establishment” cloak abuses, and how eulogistic and dyslogistic labels sway opinion75,76. Luther finds that at Rome only the words change, never the deeds77. Manzoni’s authorities ban the word “plague” and shift its meaning before admitting the thing78. Hobbes observes that the same doctrine is called opinion by those who like it and heresy by those who do not79. Gentler euphemism appears in the Roman habit of saying of the dead that they have lived80,81. At the comic edge stand Peter’s malapropisms corrected by Don Quixote82 and the Swabians drowned by a misheard croak83. Augustine turns such matters grave: men fear a slip in pronouncing “human being” more than the murder of one84.
The conduct of speech is a moral question as old as Confucius, who hates a glib tongue and would have speech slow because deeds are hard85,86. Epictetus notes that we have two ears and one tongue87. Thomas à Kempis counsels silence about others88, and Ecclesiastes says the fool multiplies words89. Satire supplies the babbler: the barber called “the Silent” who never stops talking90,91, and Bunyan’s Talkative, son of Say-well of Prating Row92. Yet talk is also an art. Swift thinks its faults corrigible and laments its decline93,2. Emerson makes conversation a game of circles in which silence is better still94. Stevenson offers a counterweight: a man without command of language leaves his amiable qualities buried95, though between intimates a look outdoes long explanations96. Penn holds that words are for others, not for ourselves or God97.
Beyond misuse lies inadequacy. Dante says his tongue before the final vision would be like an infant’s at the breast98. Woolman finds no language for the inward change he experienced99, and Darwin no epithets equal to tropical scenery100. Stevenson calls words imprecise arrows, since the world was made before English and on a different design101. Emerson calls every discourse an approximate translation of the unspoken fact102. Divine matters require accommodation. Milton’s Raphael likens spiritual things to corporal forms103, and Pascal explains Scripture’s anthropomorphism as a sign of intention, not of manner104.
On style the plain-speaking party is nearly unanimous. Confucius says the whole end of speech is to be understood105, and Penn repeats it106. Aristophanes’ Euripides mocks Aeschylus’ monstrous compounds107. Montaigne wants speech natural and vigorous, words serving matter108,109. Hamlet ridicules Osric’s inflated diction110, Pascal compares forced antitheses to false windows111, and Johnson places a lasting style in the common speech of life112. Wordsworth carries the principle into poetry. He would use the very language of men, finding rustic speech more permanent than poets’ arbitrary diction113,114. He denies any essential difference between the language of prose and of metre115,116, and he condemns a phraseology never heard in conversation117. Sidney had held instead that verse weighs each syllable by the dignity of its subject118. Shelley turns the question around: poets are the authors of language, and early language was itself poetry119,120. Emerson calls language fossil poetry121. Caxton credits Chaucer with refining rude English122, and Dryden credits Chaucer and Boccaccio with refining their mother tongues123. Precision returns in Ruskin, who would have us read syllable by syllable124 and finds in Milton’s “blind mouths” an exact inversion of bishop and pastor125.
How tongues should be learned sets use against rule. Locke argues at length that languages come by rote, talk and reading, and that grammar is for grown scholars126,127. Montaigne had pure Latin at six from a household that spoke nothing else128. Milton treats languages as mere instruments129. Plutarch, learning Latin late, understood the words through things rather than things through words130. Whether the learned tongues deserve years of a boy’s life is disputed. Locke would cultivate English first, observing that the Greeks and Romans polished their own tongues131,132. Montaigne treats Greek and Latin as ornaments133, and Descartes writes in French for those who use their natural reason134. Abroad, the question becomes practical: the lingua franca of Barbary in Cervantes135, the Babel of the California beach in Dana136,137, and Cleopatra speaking many tongues without an interpreter138.
Translation tests whether meaning is separable from words. Cervantes and Shelley doubt it: verse loses its natural worth, and the poet’s creation cannot be transfused, which Shelley calls the curse of Babel139,140. Voltaire finds humour lost141, yet defends freedom, since the letter kills and the spirit quickens142. Dryden steers between metaphrase and paraphrase and makes Virgil speak such English as he would have spoken143,144. Long prefers a rude fidelity145. Interpreters bring their own hazards. Paul warns that unknown tongues make speakers barbarians to each other146. Rousseau asks why God should need an interpreter147. Woolman’s Papunehang, hearing imperfect interpretation, loves to feel where words come from148.
Last comes the life of particular languages. Caxton finds English changed within his lifetime and divided by shire, as in his tale of eggs and “eyren”149,150. Voltaire reports Swift’s hope that an academy might fix the tongue151. Johnson, having laboured to regulate English, concludes that no dictionary or academy can fix sounds too volatile for legal restraint152,153. He still urges that we struggle to preserve the language154. Hugo agrees that a fixed language is dead155. Dryden would enrich English with Latin words, sparingly156. The link between language and nation runs from Herodotus, who cites Colchian speech as evidence of kinship157, to Freeman’s careful verdict. Speech is learned by acts of free will and so is no certain test of race158,159, yet mankind instinctively takes it as the badge of nationality160,161. Darwin thinks a genealogical arrangement of languages would be the only natural one162. Writing, finally, preserves the voice: Milton calls a good book the life-blood of a master spirit163, and Ruskin says a book perpetuates the voice164. Manzoni shows scribes garbling an illiterate man’s message165.
Several questions remain open. These authors do not settle whether words reveal things or merely count them. Nor do they decide whether poetry renews language or should borrow men’s real speech, or whether the language that unites a nation proves anything about its blood. The deepest disagreement is that between Hobbes’s confidence that definition can discipline speech and the conviction of Dante, Woolman and Stevenson that what matters most lies beyond words.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Man 2a
See also: Philosophy 6
See also: Definition 4c
See also: Rhetoric 2b
See also: Poetry 7a · Emotion 12c
See also: Education 8a
See also: Education 8a
See also: Poetry 7b
See also: Change 4d · Definition 5e · Poetry 7a
See also: Race and Nationality 8a · National Character 1a · History 7d · Science 6c
See also: Poetry, Definition, Race and Nationality, Education, National Character, History