If you've been a long-time fan of this blog, or have recently read back entries, you'll know I once claimed I was going to distance myself from the whimsical, tongue-in-cheek style with which I began my posting career. Lo! A new era of informative work was going to dawn, one in which I would post voluminous essays, prose and profound philosophical insights, to be critiqued by my growing mass of readers. Like most unsupervised promises, this didn’t come to pass, but not for lack of trying. Many of the insightful tidbits I come up with are trapped in my reverse-mind-sieve, an imaginary grid that lets foolish content through but prevents intricate thoughts from reaching verbalization (curse you, reverse-mind-sieve!). This, ironically enough, got me thinking about how we use language and words for various expressive purposes.

One way language works around its inability to express fine points is by painting a wide area of meaning with a single word. More exact definitions can be picked out from the palette with the aid of contextual information. Referring to this fickle nature of words, Nietzsche described language as “a mobile army of metaphors”; fair, but a little militaristic for my taste. I like to think of language, particularly writing, as an artistic medium, one whose interpretation is still up for debate, but far more uniform than say, painting. Poetry and prose make use of language’s extra dimensions of meaning, using our limited range of hazily-defined words to evoke vivid content that’s semi-independent of the actual vocabulary. Some writers are incredibly skilled at manipulating language, intuitively understanding how readers will interpret connotative meaning, even if we don’t realize it. Sneaky.

I talk about writing as if its purpose is to entertain or educate a reader, but I think that’s really secondary. The end result may be that you feel edified or moved after finishing a work, but my hunch is that most authors write by internal compulsion rather than choice. We all know the quick rush experienced after saying something exactly how you mean it, certain that you chose the right words. A talented author’s ability to give the same lucid reality to their most profound thoughts can’t be easily checked. A drug analogy might sound clichéd, but new research hints that the parts of the brain excited by learning new concepts are the same as those stimulated by opium* . It’s not a stretch to think that a similar mechanism is in place to encourage accurate communication.

The important question is, How does this pertain to me? Rereading this, it looks like I’m making a nature argument for writing talent, which is just talking crazy-talk. Everyone needs practice, especially math majors.


*http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uosc-fk062006.php