What began as a cave man cry of alienation . . . was soon reckoned as the first step in advancentment of culture, tribal gathering, or just plain old progress. Therefore a tool.
The question is: how is this tool used? (and not so much, what is the purpose–that’s more subtle/hidden)
Connotation
1 a : the suggesting of a meaning by a word apart from the thing it explicitly names or describes b : something suggested by a word or thing : IMPLICATION
What word connotation teaches us about word choice is there happens to be an efficiency to our verbal wants and needs. Our personality is product that we sell to others by the type of reality that we shape through language.
Before I go any further, let’s open this up for discussion. If you’re intersted, shoot me some feedback.
Based on your implicit logic, it’s hard to understand when such a caveman’s cry would ever NOT be a tool. In any event, if such an enunciation wasn’t “intended” performatively, what grounds would we have for comparing it to some “cry” that WAS a ‘tool’?
So I’ve got to confess I believe the real issue isn’t just the connection between personality and language. In this reductive conjugate, we end up deriving one from the other-- either saying, “Language is (only) a tool, used by humans to share information” or “Personality is produced through the effects of speech on the subject.” While the second is closer to your impulse regarding the convergence reality and language, we really have to go beyond both if we are to unearth the roots of language; that is, we have to reach towards pure events, the very surface of language, creativity.
Hardly. We never were cave men. And we aren’t inherently isolated. As I pointed out on the other thread, at least one other person was present at your birth and the same is true of every other human that we know of. Alienation is a product of the division of labour, capital, and of course, the failings of language and other social means.
How on earth do you know what cave men thought of language? In particular, it seems a rash and almost absurd assumption to think that cave men conceived on language in this late 20th century utilitarian fashion that you’ve described.
The question is: whether or not language is rightly conceived of as a tool in the same manner one might conceive of a wrench or drill.
Only if one conceives of language in this fashion. If one conceives of it as a self-subverting melange of difference and deferrals, then there ‘happens to be’ no such thing.
The focus is too much on a black and white conceptualization that things (eg: language) are either used as tools for an alternative solipsism or that they’re inherent (or perspectively, some opposing form). The main fault is that the concept is fluid in that the aforementioned divergence of things being placed into seperate categories is false; rather everything is simply notches on the same perverbial belt that we all use to find that higher calling within ourselves.
Whether or not we’re realizing it, everybody is consciously or subconsciously striving for something and unfortunately we try to pawn it off as “we’re looking for love” or “commitment” or “acceptance” or “connection” or whatever lyrical chants we hear on the radio that tickle our fancy.
It comes down to us wanting to grow. We use the lines “love” and “committment” and “acceptance” (etc.) as a sublime resolution to end all and ultimately result in our happiness. But the trouble with this is that we’re using the antecedent as finish lines rather than building blocks, because like language, we use love and commitment (and all the other ingredients of true happiness) as tools for our growth. When it comes down to it, growth is what we’re all aspiring for; everything else just becomes the roots for how deeply planted and far reaching we ultimately evolve to become…
