"Language arises from man's need to express himself, to objectify himself" (45). I find this idea just fascinating. It kind of reminds me of Platonism. Plato and Socrates I suppose kind of denied at least to a certain extent, the reality of the "real world". To them, what was real was what was in our minds. Thinking about ideas and language in this way is kind of exciting, interesting. It's to say that there are very real icons or images in our mind, and our language is the only way that we can describe those images. It would certainly be much cooler to project these images onto a screen and show them to people, but as we all know that is impossible. So, we are left with language as our means for the transmission of ideas.
I think this is a very different concept from what we have previously seen in this class. Before this, I generally understood ideas as needs that arose from our need to communicate. Language therefore needed to be effective for the sake of making a person comprehensible. We saw this primarily with Locke and how words are signs for the words that they signify. Now I can kind of think language as something that arose because we have the ideas that need to be expressed and shared, and only effective language will do this ideas justice. Might this idea also reflect ideas that Austin presents as far as language being peformative? Maybe in this case, not so much that language describing the images in our mind's eye perform an action as much as they serve a function in our mental well being, but I am really not too sure.
I like this post because of the idea it raises in terms of this class and recognizing the claims we are reading. I am in the same boat, I feel I have a hold on something only to read another text to completely influence me to change my mind. I have not thought of this idea until just now, so thank you for introducing it to me. Naturally I must comment and put my ideas into conversation with you. I see the how language and communication can clash in the quest to define them however; it is an argument similar to which came first, the chicken or the egg? I believe there will forever be a roundabout process of discussion in terms of determining which is the base of either because language and communication are so reliant upon one another.
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