EGAUGNAL or LANGUAGE: Production v. Comprehension

In Stephens and Hasson’s article Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication, the essential distinction between language production and language comprehension is drawn. From a fundamental linguistic perspective, an individual is almost always capable of comprehending more language than he or she can produce. This poses an interesting and curious dichotomy of neurological language use, as it seems to suggest that the human mind has two receptacles, if you will, in which language is stored. It seems as though the first receptacle, where language is initially stored, houses the words and phrases merely recognized, though not established well enough to duplicate in usage. The second receptacle, then, houses words and phrases that are familiar enough to recycle in one’s own language. Theoretically, words that have been heard in proper use with sufficient repetition will eventually transfer from the first to the second receptacle, allowing an individual to both comprehend as well as produce that particular element of language.

            This notion seems to apply, although in a perplexingly reverse manner, to Dean Young’s poem Handy Guide. Throughout the piece, Young expresses a series of seemingly bizarre and unrelated thoughts, all of which containing relatively basic language that ought to be familiar to most adult users of language. The reversal from the underlying linguistic notion, that comprehension precedes production, can be observed when considering the readily accessible nature of most all of Young’s language in the poem compared to the apparent inane and inexplicable nature of his statements. The poem begins, for example, with the stupefying couplet, “Avoid adjectives of scale. / Dandelion broth instead of duck soup.” The poem continues in this manner and leaves the poor reader with a complete lack of any coherent or cohesive understanding. It this unusual case, the reader’s ability to duplicate or produce this language for himself is not at all difficult, but the same reader’s ability to comprehend anything that he has just read or reproduced is virtually impossible (besides, of course, applying a series of arbitrary interpretations to the poem).

            This anomaly of a poem begs the question, is it not possible, then, to say many, many things that we can almost never truly understand?          

The Grass is Always Greener

Russell Edson’s poem Antimatter offers an innovative representation of a very well established notion. Humanity has long been familiar with the phenomenon experienced when an individual has something, but feels as though he/she might be happier with an alternative thing. This idea has been summed up concisely in the colloquialism: the grass is always greener. In other words, whenever one believes that happiness is just out of reach, they might reconsider that which they are clutching at the present, and perhaps come to the conclusion that what they have is more than enough to evoke happiness.

            The first and last lines of this poem play an especially crucial role in the reconfiguration of this ideal. The poem begins, “On the other side of a mirror there’s an inverse world,” setting up not only the visual concept of a division between this side and the other, but also using the word inverse to capture the fundamentally backwards nature of Edson’s hypothetical world. In a world where such anomalies as insane people going sane and sunrise occurring at night are the norm, one might consider this arrangement to be completely far fetched. The surprising and revealing truth of the matter is, however, that in a world where every person is insane, one is just as concerned about acquiring sanity as we are of losing it in our world, on our side of the mirror. So, while the picture Edson paints looks to us like a wild concoction of Tim Burton and Salvador Dali, it is truly no more bizarre than our world might seem to a citizen of this inverse society.

            Finally, in the last, and arguably most profound line in Edson poem, we learn, “In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, is joy . . .” To us, a reversion from adulthood into childhood, a loss of all the great benefits of being a cognizant and responsible human, seem very sad indeed. But is it truly any more sad than the exchange of innocence for corruption, the rise from peaceful youth to aggressive age. Without Edson’s unique perspective into a world upside down and backwards in every way, we might be inclined to consider our own situation to be the very happiest a situation can be. When we consider it against our own reality, though, it becomes apparent that life is only what one makes of it. Happiness is achieved only through making the best of one’s circumstances, not attempting to radically alter them for some invented or imagined ideal.     

To Feel Or Not To Feel, That Is The Distinction

Suzanne Keen’s article, A Theory of Narrative Empathy, poses an interesting distinction between the notions of empathy and sympathy. Empathy causes an individual to “feel what we believe to be the emotions of others,” while sympathy only allows an individual to experience “feelings for another” (208). In literature, the reader can only ever hope to get as close to the characters as the author permits. If we are only given a base description of a character, it is likely that we will become significantly less emotionally invested in the character’s condition. Alternatively, is we are given a good deal of insight into the character’s thoughts and emotions, we stand a much better chance of coming closer to understanding, appreciating, and ultimately feeling that which the character feels. This does sound good in theory, which stands to support Keen’s choice of title, however I am apprehensive to admit that a reader can ever fully empathize with a fictitious character made of letters and sentences. At best, we might hope to develop a sense of sympathy for the condition of a given character.

            That is to say, while I, the reader, could certainly come to a conclusion where “I feel pity for your pain,” like the physical pain experienced by Louisa from her fall, or the emotional pain felt by those who witnessed it, I adamantly believe that one can never truly feel the pain of another, especially not when the other is comprised solely of symbols (209). It is entirely natural that we, as insightful and intellectual creatures, can comprehend that the situation of another is either bad or good or some variation. It seems that the only way one could truly feel exactly the same physical or emotional sensation as another would be to experience exactly what the other experienced and through that individual’s perspective. The former would be difficult enough to orchestrate, ensuring that each and every detail of the scenario is identical, but the latter, as far as I am aware, is utterly impossible. Even if the replication of a single experience were carried out flawlessly, it would be experienced differently through the filter of the sympathizer’s perception than through that of the initial subject. For this reason, I doubt whether true empathy can ever be achieved, especially when the subject of the empathy is a series of words on a page.