Language and Culture

Paper: Letters not about Love

Two poets from two different sides of the planet whose cultures are just as far apart exchange letters that are themed on single words. The first trick, the word, is based on a memorized arbitrary pairing between a sound and a meaning. [S. Pinker pg.2] A word is a simple concept when thought about at first. A word is an arbitrary sound used to represent some random thing. Memorize what each arbitrary sound and the random thing it stands for and that should be all there is to fill your mental lexical database. Words are the building blocks to sentences, but before you're ready to build a sentence there are few rules you must memorize.

Then the movie "Letters not about love" should have been simple. State a word then state its meaning. For example, 'Dog' four-legged mammal that barks (incessantly if it lives next to me) and chases cats. End of statement, well except there is so much more. These poets and poets in general act like scavengers in a dark corner of a basement rummaging around in the clutter and finding treasure buried there. The treasure they are finding is some stray meaning for a thought. Bakhtin's statement "Language does not move through uncluttered space." is a true representation of this. Each time someone utters something it must move past your lexical database of meanings. This stray representation can add a dimension to a word like the strokes of paint from a paintbrush.

Poets use this clutter like clay to mold an image of something in our minds; some of the things they overturn in this basement of clutter will mean nothing to some and everything to others. When Arkadii Dragomoshchenko wrote of his Grandmother and how he felt free of fear about her tight lips, her dark eyes, all of the different ways he described her, were words that really filled in the picture of who his grandmother was.

Some of these 'words' weren't so far out of the ordinary but free of fear, there is some clutter overturned here. I immediately get the feeling of safety when I think free of free. My feelings of being free of fear came from somewhere else, I remember as a child, late at night I would have scary thoughts before falling asleep, then I could hear my father walking around downstairs, this filled me with a feeling of safety, free of fear, the scary thoughts wouldn't be so scary anymore. All the sudden I have a concrete image of his grandmother, at least a vivid sliver. Arkadii's Grandmother must have given him this same feeling.

When Lyn Hejinian wrote about her home she described it as it was when she was a child, I suppose this is how we all remember our home, well I guess that's clutter, maybe we all don't remember our homes as children. When she talked about the dry air and damp fog, the dry grass, all this uncovers clutter from many years ago and makes my image of Lyn's home more vivid. I think that mentally you search a lexical database and find these images dry grass, damp fog, and dry air. If these can be applied to the subject at hand, dimension is added. The picture of Lyn's home is coming into focus.

It isn't just poets who are the scavengers trying to find and use this useful clutter, we all do it. Often when a friend is telling a story he'll try to spark recognition by saying it was like the time… attempting to illuminate some clutter to give his stories life. Sometimes it works and they seem very realistic, it works best when he can get a hold of something that is cast in stone for the group. The story gets a life all its own and we have a clearer picture of what's going on.

So a simple concept letters about words provides a deeper meaning showing how these words take on a life a their own. There is more to the word Grandmother than the mother of your Mother, she is also the one that gives you the feeling, free of fear, the smell of oatmeal cookies. The same is true when Lyn talks of her home it is more than a building than she grew up in. The dry air, and dry grass and create an environment she called home, which she couldn't simply express by just using the word home.

The cultural difference between these two poets although a great difference, on one hand Arkadii grew up in Russia during the cold war, during a time of great suppression of freedom, and suspicion towards your neighbor and government. This type of atmosphere has existed in Russia for hundreds of years, making a well-rooted culture. (I think ill-rooted would better express the culture in Russia due to the suppression of people) On the other hand Lyn grew up in California probably the polar opposite of Russia, during the time of her youth Californians were living a lifestyle of freedoms most Russians probably never could have had.

The words chosen for the writings didn't show a consistently glaring difference. Some words seemed to demonstrate a basic thread through them, such as Grandmother, home, and poverty. When spilling out the contents of their lexical databases, the clutter, they displayed seemed somewhat similar. Other words had an evident distinction showing the differences in their cultures. When writing about book Arkadii almost seemed reverent he spoke about a library that was in an old church like he'd found some secret treasure trove. Lyn although she showed books were important to her there was a difference; certainly books were more readily available to her.

The differences between any two languages, between two cultures can display a richness that can be key to having a clearer understanding of each culture. Even if when looking at differences you find similarities, you move one step closer to understanding another culture.

Works Cited

Pinker Steven. Words and Rules: The ingredients of Language. New York New York: Basic Books, 1999