We pounce on words and somehow red turns blue
We pounce on words and they pile up into books, literature, not literature, mortgages, advertisements, curfews, claims of love, claims of hate, report cards, the price of bananas, instructions for an electric toothbrush, speed limits, a history of Atwater Beach
Which of these words deserves coronation and which the guillotine?
Words, rolling around in the stream of understandings and mis-understandings, which they forge, makes it hard to know
But isn’t that the game?
Isn't language an amazing thing? In professional life we aim for clearness and directness to avoid for instance any misunderstanding of instructions. Maybe that's why we yearn for reading other's words in fiction and poetry and enjoy cross word puzzles. In those arenas, ambiguity or a double meaning or an unusual use of a word make the language all the more interesting.
ReplyDeleteWe agree. To hunger for ambiguity after a day of straight talk both restores and animates.
ReplyDeleteTo roll around in words, what a way to unfetter the imagination.
ReplyDeleteJust for fun--on the list of unsettled linguistic issues is that there is no agreement as to what is a word. There are various schools of thought that support one definition or another but so far no agreement. The same holds true for the sentence.
ReplyDeleteUnfettering the imagination (Cha sen) puts words in the orbit of mystery and magic, where they are unlikely to ever accept strict definition.
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