The French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote at length about the power language has over reality. According to Foucault, language has the power to make and unmake the world insofar as people who use language perceive it. Thus, language is the mechanism by which the powers that be regulate what can and cannot exist. You cannot imagine what you lack the words to describe. If you cannot imagine something, as far as you and your experience of reality are concerned, it cannot exist. To have the power to control what words mean becomes the ultimate power to dominate. Language, according to Foucault, is a prison for the mind. It can also be the means to escape this bondage.
Hopefully I haven't completely lost you with all the one-hand-clapping and dreams-that-stuff is made of.
Anyway, as you might expect, Foucault's ideas have been applied to lots and lots of political situations, both historic and contemporary. The Holocaust is possible only if the powerful can define –- through language –- who is and is not a person. Correspondingly, genocide cannot exist in a world where the words everyone uses to describe mass murder are not "mass" and "murder." In a similar vein, Orwell's totalitarian government in 1984 suppresses its citizens primarily through language. Vacuous, machine-produced pop songs, an ever-shrinking dictionary of colorless words, and a relentless censorship campaign directed against any thought that runs contrary to those of the Party – taken together, these three things make up Big Brother's strategy for staying in control. Even the Bible talks about the power of language. Before the building of the famed Tower of Babel, Genesis 11 says that all people spoke one language. This passage implies that this civilization’s unity of language is the source of its rulers’ limitless power.
Truth be told, though, language has the power to oppress us, even if this oppression is not being conducted by a government or for political ends. I become aware of this fact when I live in places where people do not speak English as their mother-tongue. My working as a language teacher –- an engineer of reality –- at the moment makes me even more acutely sensitive to language's capacity to cause us pain.
My hosts here in Korea have been more than hospitable. Their kindness speaks all languages – transcends them in its warmth. And yet, there is still the inescapable feeling of distance, of separation, of being the outsider in this place of sames. When I speak with them, we all grope for the right words. They handle my language the way I wield a pair of chopsticks –- awkwardly – grasping with great effort and difficulty at those slippery grains of rice. And I can't speak their language at all. Nuance, subtlety – all these things evade us. It hurts. My coteacher and her friends converse in Korean's lilting sing-song, laughter often bubbles up at some joke they all share, but I cannot fathom. Or some emotion unmistakable-but-inscrutable flashes across my coteacher's mask of a face. Words to describe it, to join in the conversation, to laugh out loud with them, and to know what is in her mind when she makes that face -– they are always on the tip of my tongue and just out of reach all at the same time.
Their language, from what little bit I've been able to gather, is light-years different from ours. It is nearly impossible to get my students to speak in full sentences. If, as a teacher, you can get them to put a noun and a verb together, that really is something to drink a toast to. Aaron, the long-timer American who teaches at the private school in Hapdeok, tried to explain this to me once. Apparently, Korean is more verb-oriented than English, so a sentence like "You are obstructing the way," would be rendered something like, "You're obstructing," or maybe just "Obstructing," in Korean. Insane levels of detail can be rendered through the verbs. How this effects the way the culture thinks I can't say – although the impact must be profound. Sometimes it all just becomes too much, and I duck around the corners of Hapdeok's plastic-and-plaster landscape to avoid people I know. Anything to avoid speaking English with these people –- at least for right now. Anything to avoid being reminded exactly how out of place I really am here. Other times we manage, for the blink of an eye, to fight our way through all the language that separates us. These moments are as dazzling as they are rare –- like sunshine slipping through a thunderhead. Like when I explained the concept of something being "High Mileage." Mr. Chang's smile was miles wide, his salt-and-pepper hair wobbling as he convulsed with laughter. For this instant, we understood each other – and it was like shooting stars in the void. Other times, the difficulty with which we communicate can almost be a merciful thing.
Running into another American here often reminds me of this. All the things I could say to such a person, if only I knew what to say. All the things I usually do end up saying, most of which I don't intend. It's so easy to make meaning that it’s easy to get lost in that ease and forget to say anything of substance. I don't have to think about what they are saying to understand, which means I can feel all manner of embarrassed and creeped out and worried by every little nuance of every little word and expression – and it all shows because I understand so easily that I don't have time to make my face lie.
Don't get me wrong –- I love talking to Koreans and I love speaking English. Maybe what I really mean to say here is just that life as a human being –- making meaning, whether it is easy or difficult or somewhere in between –- is a difficult thing, whether you can speak the language of the people around you or not. Longing and loneliness –- trying to read Grace-whose-name-is-not-Grace's expressive-but-alien face. Losing myself in the hedge maze of another pointless conversation about Tarantino's dialogue with some English-speaker I meet at a party. Sometimes it is all just too much. I am lonely and alone in the prison for my mind that is my language. Foucault's word blues. Every once in a while, though, mercifully, by a grace I don't understand, lightning strikes.
"High Mileage."
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