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Words As Symbols
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» PoiSoNeD_CaNdY replied on Mon Mar 1, 2004 @ 10:11pm |
 Coolness: 92380 | Growing up, I spent winters in Canada speaking English, and most summers in Israel speaking Hebrew with the other half of my family. I began to notice that the way I spoke with and interacted with other people in Israel varied greatly with how I did so in Canada. It seemed like I had two selves: my identity while in Israel was completely seperate of that in Canada, and I switched between identities whenever I switched between countries.
This realization has troubled me ever since I first became aware of it. Don't I have only one true personality? Why can't I be the same person across different environments? I have wondered about this for along time, and I think I have come across at least part of the answer, and it relates to the cultural differences embedded in the language of each country. Words are nothing more than symbols which communicate a shared meaning between two or more people. Language in itself is just garbled monkey sounds; it is their symbolic meaning that makes words important. Taken together, this set of shared meanings communicated through language provides the basis of culture. Thus, when moving across a language barrier, one has no choice but to leave behind the symbols of one culture and to adopt the symbols of another. While to a certain extent one can string together words that carry some measure of personal expression, this is only possible within the confines of the recognized shared meanings of words that exist within a culture. Language is at once liberating and confining. Most of us do not invent words or meanings, rather we must adopt the pre-existing defined symbolic meanings of words in order that our message be understood. Furthermore, I feel that when making use of the linguistic symbols of a particular language, our personality and memory is altered by defining our subjective experience in terms of the words we choose to express these experiences with. Putting these ideas together, it suddenly made sense to me why I felt like different people in different language environments. Without a set of shared symbols between the people of Israel and Canada, I was forced to define myself alternatively using the different set of meanings employed by the two languages, English and Hebrew. Hope this makes any sense to you, and I would love additional input / comments / thoughts in regards to what you think about this topic. |
Words As Symbols
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