Language games

Posted by admin on Oct 31, 2007 in From the Editor | 0 comments

An acquaintance and I were once debating the term “fundamentalism.” The acquaintance maintained that he was a fundamentalist Christian, and I strongly disagreed. I said he would never want to call himself that for Christian fundamentalism is a radically narrow minded sect of Christianity, and so we argued for a bit. We finally understood that we disagreed because we both had completely different ideas of the meaning of a Christian fundamentalist.

He interpreted the word fundamentalist as an assertion of his belief in the core traditional beliefs of Christianity. For myself, the word fundamentalist conjured the image of a self-righteous conservative evangelical with a penchant for projecting their religiosity into a political agenda. This did not describe the person I was talking with, and thus led to our brief argument that I was determined to win. I reasoned that although the word may once have literally meant what he thought it did, in the hundred years or so since, the phrase “fundamentalist Christian” has acquired new meaning because it now characterizes the actions and beliefs of a particular group of people.

But why was it so important that we agreed on the definition of a fundamentalist? The other person was talking about the definition of fundamental in regards to his beliefs in Christianity, and I was talking about a connotative definition of a word used within our culture.

To understand each other, we needed to agree on the right meaning of the word. However, a word is so much more than its definition – the real power is in its emotional use. Misinterpretation easily happens when we fail to regard how language changes and acquires new meanings.

Each community is governed by its own language games. Some words are invested with more power, and some are trivialized so that others may have significance.

As our awareness of language and meaning increases, the knowledge gained from our experience enables us to deepen our understanding. Our use of language can begin by merely mimicking what we have heard, but can turn into an intense process of realization where words are no longer static, and instead transform our thinking and being.

So what does langauge do with us? Language happens, it is provoking and engaging. It’s through language that we ask ourselves what we are and look to other people to provide answers for us.

We express ourselves through many mediums, including art and song, but words require precision and clarity. Our existence is affirmed by language, and through it we are accountable for communicating our beliefs and encountering the world.

Language burdens us with meaning. It is a product of human beings interacting with the world and each other. It perpetually frustrates us by distorting our meanings, and yet provides some of the most direct insight into who we are and how we express our identity to other people.