Whose Language.

Words, As Fruit. #24

“She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love.” ― Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993

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I’ve always believed that one of the biggest fallacies we were taught as children came by way of the popular rhyme, “Sticks and Stones”. I knew then, what I know now, words can and did hurt me. Most often happening in tandem with action, words can serve as hurt’s companion, a precursor, amplifier, and/or instigator of the harm to come.

The power of words and language cannot be ignored but language so often goes unchecked because we choose to discount the everyday ways in which language is used to wrangle us. Sometimes it’s so long after the language has had its way with us that we look up, and can’t figure out, or choose to ignore, how we arrived somewhere we didn’t know we were going. But the language…the language we minimized, excused, and dismissed, was making a path and leading the way, all along.

These days, there are more questions in me than completed thoughts or poignant streams of consciousness. The streams in fact are anything but eloquent. Instead they are intense emotions and sharp feelings, rushings of tears that seemingly come out of nowhere, and there are dreams, which I would have once called nightmares but I cannot bring myself to do so now because these dreams, regardless of how disturbing or terrifying, are momentary and imagined. I wake up from them, not to them. They are not real for me, but they are reality for someone else.

So all I have for today is questions. At first my questions were going to be about how we distinguish a truth from a lie, but “truth” and “lie”, and “good” and “evil”, are words so often misused, manipulated and disguised. Instead I attempt to ask questions about the language — bodies of words, and the manners in which they are organized and used — the words we think, the words we speak, the words we inherit and teach. I question: why, and how, are we taught to use these words, and what do they teach us to accept, see, and believe?

On March 7, 2013 Toni Morrison, in conversation with Claudia Brodsky (professor, Comparative Literature, Princeton University), reflected back on a much discussed aspect, practice and aim in her writing. Toni reiterates that her intention, through her writing, it is to, “take away the white gaze”. As it relates to the construction of her narratives, Morrison posed the question, “Whose eye, whose language, is controlling this?”

I invite you to search your own mental rolodex. Recall something you have been taught, told or shown, over and over, so much so that its repetition has led you to hold a particular belief about yourself, a belief that defines how or who you are in relationship to someone else. What does this belief require of you? Does it require you to speak or act in a particular way? Does it require that you abandon, diminish or disregard something or someone else in order for the belief to be true or sound? Does it in anyway require your silence, or the silence of someone else? Does it welcome or invite curiosity or does it inhibit, or limit it? Does it allow independent thinking, or does it expect and demand your agreement without question? Does it flatten the world around you? Does it force or require you to see, think, or act in only one manner, or way, without nuance, distinction or differentiation? Does it require manipulation, either of yourself or someone else? Does it allow space for feeling — compassion, kindness, consideration, or grace? Does it require destruction, submission, or subjugation?

What do our beliefs, and the language and words used, teach, tell or lead us to accept as real or true? And what realities do our beliefs teach, tell, or lead us to deny or refuse?

On December 7, 1993, Toni Morrison delivered her Nobel Lecture. A requirement of every Nobel Prize laureate, the lecture subject is to be informed by the work for which the Nobel Prize has been awarded. Morrison’s, The Nobel Lecture in Literature, is about the real value in language. In 2020, I began studying this lecture. Listening, and reading, re-listening and re-reading. The following excerpt, I share it in hopes of furthering your interest, or at the very least, your curiosity, in the role language plays, in giving shape, asserting meaning, and contextualizing action or thought. I hope it inspires you to notice and, if not already, deeply consider how language is used to affirm or deny worth or value, and establish or dismantle the reality or validity of a person, an action, experience, or event.

“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise.”

In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.

One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says,

“Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead.”

She does not answer, and the question is repeated. “Is the bird I am holding living or dead?”

Still she doesn’t answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.

The old woman’s silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.

Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. “I don’t know”, she says. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”

Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.” — Toni Morrison, 1993 Nobel Lecture

LISTEN HERE: https://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/?id=1502