(Image Source: http://www.posttypography.com/illustration/language-changed-by-the-internet/ with original credit due the New York Times)
I love this picture, the fingerprints erasing and expanding, reshaping and redefining, demonstrating that the very act of engaging with language changes the very shape of language.
I love language.
I love the bumps and curves of it as it scrolls across the page, the letters forming symbols like stones, piling one upon another, creating a castle, brick by beautiful brick, that is so much larger than the sum of its parts. Whether it’s great writing or great oratory (a product, I may add, of great writing), language, in all its various symbols, is something to be celebrated, encouraged, and discussed.
I love language.
I love its ambiguity and its specificity, as vast a distance as between Pluto and the Sun, the reach between the two containing worlds, moons, and stars of nuance. I love that some words are more solid than others, more fixed in the sky–to the naked eye–at any rate–while some are more fluid, freezing or flowing based on outside forces, like societal pressure, or internal forces, like impassioned beliefs. I love that the same words, the same symbols, can depict the rise and fall of resounding success and bewildering defeat. I love that common words, with simpler meaning in one language, can hold depths of nuance in another, containing, within a tiny sphere, both sameness and difference. I love that the gap between specificity and ambiguity creates a space for interpretation, for debate, for the free exchange of ideas–all of which are formed by words.
One of my favorite sayings is one attributed to Mark Twain. “The difference between the right word and the almost- right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
I love language. I love its cadence, its alliteration, its dual meaning. And I really, really love puns. Especially when they’re groaners.
I love language.
As I sift through the Supreme Court’s decision on Obergefell v. Hodges, (the decision which can be read here) I find myself wondering: why haven’t I done this before? Why have I not read legal decisions before, especially those handed down by the highest court in the United States of America? It’s fascinating stuff, filled with all the beauty of language I so love. I haven’t finished all of the dissents yet. My habit of taking notes, googling definitions, and reading peripheral information (i.e., cited cases)–a holdover from my undergrad years–is making it a bit slow. I probably should have read the judgment in its entirety first: I’ve heard I’m in for a joy-ride of gobbly-gook in Justice Scalia’s dissent. I especially love gobbly-gook. From Whedonesque language (i.e., the “Buffy Years,” which were preceded by the “Firefly months”) e.g., the manipulation of nouns into adjectives and adverbs, verbs into nouns, etc. to the sheer linguistic acrobatics of Tom Robbins, I love gobbly-gook.
Lyrical Fool 