Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. While working on my linguistics project I have come across a lot of universal wisdom disguised as bland academia. Thoughts and quotes that produce a lasting effect well beyond the initial reading. I wanted to share one of them with you this week.
One of the best ways to truly understand a thing, is to study it’s history and development. Things rarely take a linear path to their current status. Those twists and turns are often filled with difficult decisions, decisions which alter trajectory.
The study of language and communication is no different. If anything I have found it to be even more interesting, because there’s is so much we don’t know. Hypotheses rise and fall on new data and discoveries in a never ending change of tides. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics, tells this story across the millennia and across the various areas of linguistic study.
Our current understanding of language, is in large part due to understanding the process of change. What data we have an ancient languages, and mapping the changes through the years to where we are now.
One of the beautiful things about language is that it is dynamic and mobile. A word’s meaning, connotation, even it’s spelling is all subject to change.
“There can never be in language, just as there can never be in the continually blazing thoughts of men, a moment of true standstill.” (von Humboldt 1836b: 184)
Linguists draw a comparison (which could also be expanded to fit humans) that languages only become static when they stop being used. These are then considering “dead” languages. People are very much the same.
Even the most obstinate toddler (not that I have any experience with those) is constantly being exposed to new information and experiences. They are a bundle of new patterns and changes.
When we stop our continually blazing thoughts, when we stop learning and growing, we reach a mental standstill. We become our own dead language. Something other people have little use for, except maybe a passing curiosity.
The standstill is akin to death in this mental metaphor, which translates well to the physical realm. In grappling sports constant motion is required to set up an technique. Being at a standstill is a surefire way to get beat, or worse, injured.
In endurance sports a standstill is the classic sign of defeat. Haunched over, heaving, hands on knees, halted. The picture of an athlete who cannot progress any further that day.
Von Humboldt’s words are beautiful, and I think they are accurate. It seems with any judgement of people (and language for that matter too) it becomes necessary to add a caveat. An asterisk.
Never is a powerful word. An absolute. One that begs no argument. Humans, and language, can only find themselves at a true standstill of their own accord. When they fail to forge forward along the path, is when they die literally or metaphorically.
Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.