The Sensibility of Words
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief – William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The dictionary defines words as units of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation that functions as a principal carrier of meaning. English philosopher John Locke wrote that the use of words is to be sensible marks of ideas. Therein lies the sensibility of words. Words that we use every day to communicate ideas, instructions and impressions. Without them, where would we be. Words, the way you use them, defines you.
Words serve many purposes. Words are the atoms of our cognitive world. Without words, the world as we know it will cease to exist. Words put Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo behind bars. Words also have the tremendous power to heal. I remember reading this post in Psychology Today about the use of words to both describe and prescribe. It declares that the choice of words we use in everyday life is a reflection of the state of our life. It gave the example of a patient who was having a harrowing time and used strong words to describe the most mundane situations in her life. Her therapist convinced her to use gentler words. So while traffic used to be ‘hell’, it became ‘rough’, and then ‘difficult’. The choice of words did not solve the patient’s problems, but her everyday struggles became more manageable when described in a different light.
Great works of literature are honed by the brilliance of how words are employed. Experienced writers treat words like gold for they add value to their writing. Every word serve a purpose. The appeal in their books lies in their selection of words and the manner of their presentation in a cohesive, aesthetic manner. English poet Robert Southey said it best: “If you would be pungent, be brief, for it is with words as with sunbeams- the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn’.
Why is it that we prefer some writers over others? Is it that the use of their words appeal to our sensibilities.The monograph Thinking and Writing: Cognitive Science and Intelligence Analysis by Robert S. Sinclair has an interesting take on the whole process of writing and the use of words. When a writer writes, he is trying to define his ideas by clothing them in words to communicate those ideas to others. The complexity of this operation is called cognitive overload. Skilled writers use a variety of means to reduce the overload. For example, they satisfice by using certain words, words that are good enough for the present, but could be polished or substituted when working memory had been cleared of other demands. That is to say, they try to improve on the imprecision in their language. But does even the best writers achieve perfection in their use of words? American academic Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid has this to say about the use of words: “The amazing thing about language is how imprecisely we use it and still manage to get away with it. If words were nuts and bolts, people could make any bolt fit into any nut; they’d just squish the one into the other, as in some surrealistic painting where everything goes soft. Language, in human hands, becomes almost like a fluid, despite the coarse grain of its components.” The trick is to find the right nut for the bolt.
You don’t need to know too many words to write a book as long as you are clever with their use. Theodor Geisel aka Dr. Seuss wrote the well-known children’s book Green Eggs and Ham using only 50 different words on a 50 dollar bet with Bennet Cerf, the co-founder of Random House, his publisher. This was after completing The Cat in the Hat using 225 words and Cerf suggesting Geisel could not complete an entire book using lesser words. The Wikipedia lists the 50 words, which are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you. According to Publishers Weekly, Green Eggs and Ham is fourth on its All-Time Bestselling Children’s Books list, even outselling all the Harry Potter books before 2001.
There you have it. Words. The building blocks of language. What I used to put together this post. Words, that made us, our world. How clever are you with them?
