After going a while back in the archive that is this website, I found a post to which I found I could speak to. I read Deirdre’s post, “Words,” in which she discussed the idea of esoteric knowledge and how if we take the specific meanings away from words, and define them by their “differential relationship with other signifiers,” they lose their esoteric meanings – and by extension, I think, their value as a whole.
I agree wholeheartedly with Deirdre; words certainly have special relationships with the things that they are attached to, otherwise we may as well communicate in clicks and tongues (I exaggerate, but I think you know what I mean). The most remarkable thing about words is the fact they have such an array of meanings, meanings that cover such an expanse of human emotion and experience so that we as a people can express ourselves fully. Words and their meanings, sometimes so beautiful, can move a person to tears. If we take away their special connotations, and relate words simply by what they are not, we take away the artistry of life that is found in language. Isn’t description where so much of that happens? Who has ever listened to an arrangement of words composed into music and hasn’t felt moved by the story being told? That is where magic is created, where words meet beauty, beauty meets soul, and soul meets the spirit of life.
Even if we weren’t concerned with maintaining some sort of reverence for poet, compelling culminations of words, if we decide to define them by their “differential relationship with other signifiers,” I doubt anyone would ever really be able to communicate. As Professor McCoy generously quotes, “it’s amazing a sentence is ever understood,” (my apologies if I quoted that incorrectly) and I imagine that would become an even greater feat if everyone adhered to that definition of a word.