Embedded Files
What's in a Word?
Writing Within the Inadequacies of Words as Representations
Written Imprecision
There comes a day in every writer’s life when they have to face a seemingly terrifying fact: words are insufficient. If you want a precise form of communication—a way to wax poetic about the milky glow of the moon that does its lunar majesty justice—well, you’ll just have to accept the fact that there is no such purity in linguistic existence. You cannot recreate the moon, no matter how many hours you spend typing and grappling with your keyboard’s unaccommodating keys. However, all hope is not lost, dear readers and writers, because you can, at least, represent it.
Smokes, Semiotics, and Symbolic Signs
Painter Rene Magritte visually captured the difference (perhaps even the struggle) between representation and reality with his 1929 painting The Treachery of Images. The painting itself is that of a realistic tobacco pipe with the french words Leci n’est pas une pipe written at the bottom of the canvas. In English, these words mean This is not a pipe. And it isn’t. No matter how strong the white highlights are—no matter how persuasive the dip of its bowl—it's all just a collection of well-concealed brush strokes at the end of the day. The realistic qualities of the painting can never be more than just qualities, even though there is a clear attempt on the artist’s part to make it as close as possible to the real thing. The painting is simply a representation of a pipe. In the theory of semiotics, which is defined as a “formal approach to conduct rhetorical criticism examining verbal and visual communication,” an artwork like Magritte’s is known as an iconic sign because it “look[s] like the item [it’s] representing” (Borchers and Hundley 126).
There are many other types of signs in the theory of semiotics, and words themselves are among the mix of signs because they are symbolic structures that have been assigned arbitrary meanings (Borchers and Hundley 127). In other words, words are not the things they represent. The thing that I call a book is not a book by the laws of nature. It was printed, bound, read, and then called book by the people who encountered it; that does not mean it is the word book in its very essence. We have just agreed as a culture to call it book for sake of communication.
At least it certainly makes the concept of writing book reviews a lot less confusing.
You Have to Represent
Despite the inexactness of words as symbols, then, we cannot deny that we need them as a society to avoid unexplainable, unutterable, and unalphabetized chaos. Charles Bazerman tells us that a writer’s sacred duty is “to represent facts, the world, or [their] imaginings as precisely and powerfully” as they are able to (38). Words are insufficient when it comes to capturing reality, and their shortcomings as symbols leave room for miscommunication, misunderstandings, and plain old mystery. That aforementioned milky glow of my moon might look different than the milky glow of the moon you’re picturing, and there is no way for words to fully bridge that gap between multiple potential meanings and understandings.
Virgil's haiku illustrates similar-yet-different images and ideas for those who read it. These two apples are not exactly the same.
Words “are thin and frail communicators,” but that should not be a deterrent from trying to write effectively (Bazerman 38).
In fact, this knowledge should be used as a motivator for each of us to write to the best of our abilities, just as Bazerman suggests (38). We can (and should) set the goal to come as close to accuracy with our words as possible; Magritte’s not-a-pipe would have a lot less impact if it looked more like a cat or a can of sardines. Gallery walkers would think Well, of course that’s no pipe, and they’d leave the museum completely satisfied in their new conclusion that Magritte is some kind of an incoherent hack. The true goal of art and writing in all their forms is to come as close as you can to what you mean to say or represent. Closeness—not exactness—is the tool writers must use to form connections in this communicative world. Direct awareness of “the limitations of our representations” in writing can prove to be a strength because those very limitations can inform our decision-making processes when we put words on the page (Bazerman 38). Knowing about the inaccuracies of written language keeps writers from making careless errors or from accepting the myth that the words they use “are not that important” so long as they make an attempt to write something comprehensible (Bazerman 38). Words are perhaps the most important thing we’ve got for spreading news, thoughts, love, well-wishes, and everything else that makes the world go round (Bazerman 38-39).
The fact of the matter is that, while all words are representations, some representations are not as effective as others (Bazerman 38). Writers must try to compose the cream of the representational crop in whatever way they are capable of because that is where better levels of comprehension and impact begin.
Imprecision in Practice
The most useful takeaway for composition students here, in my opinion, is that they need to be careful when they write because words are representations of things; they should consciously think about how they are describing, explaining, defining, or illustrating something because their words—as inexact as they might be—are the only things that can give their reader any prayer of understanding.
A good exercise for emphasizing the significance of this concept would be to have students choose a topic and write two versions of the same paragraph on what that topic means to them. For example, a student might decide to write about why they love stargazing. They should be instructed to write the first with very little effort; giving them a short timeframe for composing it might be beneficial. For the second paragraph, they should be instructed to be more precise with their wording, and they should be allotted more time to make those more deliberate choices. A peer should then read over both paragraphs and summarize the meanings of them. The students will then be able to compare the summaries they receive for both paragraphs, and they will most likely find that the second one feels more accurate to their own true feelings on the subject, even if it is not precisely how they feel.
The point is to help them see that the beauty of writing lies in the thoughtful effort behind it. That’s where we as humans can glimpse the light of each other as it slips softly through our linguistic curtains, and sometimes that can feel just as good as seeing the full outpour of sunshine.
Works Cited
Bazerman, Charles. "Writing Represents the World, Events, Ideas, and Feelings." Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, Utah State University Press, 2016, pp. 20-21.
Borchers, Timothy and Heather Hundley. Rhetorical Theory: An Introduction. Waveland Press, 2018, pp. 126-127.
Virgil, Anita. "not seeing." Terebess Asia Online. https://terebess.hu/english/usa/virgil.html.
Bazerman, Charles. "Writing Represents the World, Events, Ideas, and Feelings." Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, Utah State University Press, 2016, pp. 20-21.
Borchers, Timothy and Heather Hundley. Rhetorical Theory: An Introduction. Waveland Press, 2018, pp. 126-127.
Virgil, Anita. "not seeing." Terebess Asia Online. https://terebess.hu/english/usa/virgil.html.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse