The flexibility and versatility of language allows human beings to do much more than order and make sense of the external world. It also provides a cognitive framework through which people may reflect on that which happens internally, and on one’s perception of oneself. In Interpersonal Communication, Julia Wood explains the dichotomy between the internal “I” and “me.” The I is the ego-driven element of the individual’s psychological make-up, the element of identity that seeks to satisfy desires and perceived needs. The me, on the other hand, is socially conscious. As such, it “reflects on the I by analyzing the I’s actions. This means we can think about who we want to be and set goals for becoming the self we desire” (Wood, 106). Because the me can feel remorse, joy or gratification, it is capable of modifying the I’s actions in order to achieve an acceptable behavioral mean (106). Language enables this self-modifying process to take place by organizing our understanding of behavior into categories, or norms that we identify with both good and bad social actions/decisions.
Organizing perceptions is a function of utilizing symbols, which enables individuals to make sense and classify experience. Language gives meaning to these symbols, allowing us to be discriminating in our decisions and behavior. Experience provides the backdrop against which we identify these linguistic markers. For instance, “An insult is likely to be viewed as teasing if made by a friend but a call to battle if made by an enemy. The words don’t change, but their meaning varies depending on how we organize our perceptions of words and those who speak them” (Wood, 106). Thus, words are associated with meaning through the medium of language, and given context through the prism of personal experience, whether that experience was positive or negative.
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Symbols are also significant when it comes to hypothetical thought. Symbols enable people to think and reflect in ways that transcend time and place, to “contemplate things that currently have no real existence, and we can remember ourselves in the past and project ourselves into the future” (Wood, 106). It is in the way of dreaming, of imagining possibilities for oneself that are not constrained by reality. Some have labeled this as self-actualization, the phenomenon in which a person sees him or herself accomplishing a goal by doing something that will lead to the achievement of that goal. Language creates symbols that represent what that accomplishment means. These have very positive categorical associations for the individual and, consequently, will help motivate the individual to work hard to reach the goal in question. Experience, gained through time, helps the individual think hypothetically and without temporal constraints through the medium of language.
These contemplations lead to the conclusion that there is an inextricable connection between language and perception, language being the major normalizing factor in the realm of human experience (Law, 13). Language and perception are connected because, “in ‘seeing,’ we convert raw optical sensations into normative perceptions, and language is not only an exemplary but in fact the chief normalizing factor in human experience” (13). In other words, we “see” reality through language, which provides names, concepts, shapes, colors, etc., visual/perceptive cues that are presented to our perception as “nameable objects” (13). It is a profoundly interpretive phenomenon without which human society itself could not have evolved as it has over the centuries.
- Law, J.D. (1993). The Rhetoric of Empiricism: Language and Perception from Locke to I.A. Richards. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
- Wood, Julia T. (2010). Interpersonal Communication: Everyday Encounters. Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage.
