“[Ferdinand de Saussure] argues that language does not have a direct relationship to reality but functions as a system of differences: words (signifiers) have no inherent relationship to the concrete things that they describe (signified), but generate meaning as a result of their differential relationship with other signifiers.”
Joe Moran, Interdisciplinarity
I was inspired by my linguistic faux pas this week to include an epigraph (read: not an epitaph) in my blog post. So, speaking of words, one of my favorites is “esoteric,” and I think that’s partly because the word itself is somewhat esoteric.
I noticed in high school that my peers (including myself) began to separate themselves into the disciplines that they were passionate about or intended to pursue in college and beyond. While some of my friends took on the challenge of science research and AP Physics, I found myself taking the bare minimum for the science requirement. Conversely, I took creative writing and advanced creative writing in addition to a second year of AP English senior year of high school even though many of my peers didn’t because taking all three classes wouldn’t get you any useful credits. As we were given more freedom in choosing classes and as these divides began to emerge more and more, knowledge, in turn, became more esoteric.
Before, everyone took the same classes more or less. For the first two years of high school, most people took biology and chemistry, and most people read similar books in their English classes. However, once people were able to take AP Biology, there was a certain set of knowledge that they had that I most definitely didn’t. What they learned in Bio was certainly esoteric. There would be no way for me to fully understand it without taking the class.
However, to relate back to the Moran quote on Ferdinand de Saussure, words “generate meaning as a result of their differential relationship with other signifiers.” In other words, an enzyme is called an enzyme because it’s not a tree or a building or a metaphor or a Bildungsroman. (An epitaph is called an epitaph because it’s not an epigraph, and vice versa.)
If this is all true, wouldn’t it mean that nothing is actually esoteric? In being able to understand chemistry, you have to acknowledge (at least subconsciously) that sodium isn’t a poetic device, but in doing that, you can also recognize the interweaving of history and chemistry, or maybe you see chemical equations as having an almost poetic beauty and rhythm to them.
It is because of this that I’m not sure that I can fully agree with de Saussure. There is too much of an undeniable connection between words of all kinds, even across different languages. If I were in France and I happened to only speak Spanish and I also happened to be looking for a lawyer and I saw an ad for “un avocat,” I could probably make the connection that “avocat” means “abogado” (means “lawyer”) given the right context. Although this is a very specific example, I really do think that words have a special relationship to the things they are attached to.