Inventing Reality

Sent by Lauren Jane Heller    |   February 23, 2020

How does language affect our sense of selves? How does the way we speak change our relationships with others, with the world, with our views of reality and truth? If we are confronted with the challenges of being a linguistic outsider, how does it shape us? How does it shape others’ perceptions of us?

This week, I jumped down a linguistic rabbit hole entirely by accident and took pause to reflect on how communication shapes not just the way others perceive us, but our own sense of authenticity, of wholeness, of comfort, of reality. 

This was spurred, in part, by a cover letter and CV. When you are trying to put a certain face forward, when you want to win others over, how do you draw the line between performance and honesty? You want to get a foot in the door so you study the way the role and organization are positioned, you read between the lines to ascertain who these unknown people want you to be so that you can tailor yourself to their vision. But can you do it in a way that’s authentic? Can you communicate that you are all of the things they are looking for in 500 words and still retain a strong hold on your deepest truths?

I think the answer is yes, but it’s tricky, just as communicating authentically and vulnerably often is. The way we speak tells so much about us: from history to geography to social class and education. All people grow up with unique vocabularies based on families, friends and geography, and living in a country like Canada, where so many of us are first-generation immigrants, I can only imagine how many unique hybrid dialects and accents must exist. 

My unique language formed partly as a result of being the South African-Canadian child of a librarian/English teacher with a penchant for linguistic nonsense. I'm even occasionally unsure if the words I use are real. My family dialect includes words that sound like they should exist, like scrungled eggs; words that are real but sound like they shouldn't be, like cudgelconfustication, or obdurate; portmanteaus that may or may not have been made up by my mother, i.e. exhaustipated; and then there are the South Africanisms: the words borrowed from Afrikaans that pepper our language (most of which are derogatory) — skollie, skelm, doos, kakhuis — which we can use in front of the kids and other unsuspecting people without arousing suspicion. 

Having lived in Quebec for the past 18 years, I also have both Canadian English and French influences and a visceral understanding of how being a linguistic outsider affects the way you navigate the world. I often eavesdrop on young people on public transport communicating in a seamless Franglais — Ah shit! T'as vu ça? — and I wish that I was so comfortable in both tongues, that I didn’t feel like an entirely different person when I speak French from when I speak in English. 

Language clearly affects our perception of reality, both in a concrete sense (Which words do you use to describe this object?) and in a more fluid, abstract identification of truth versus fiction. We can work to be more authentic by learning to be more precise, or perhaps that work is much deeper — it’s about allowing oneself the time and space to accept and acknowledge who we are.

This is why we need art. We need poetry and literature so that we can speak of things in ways that are both precise and lacking in clarity, so that we can acknowledge that language will never be adequate to describe human experience — that what we speak is simply a channel that helps bridge the immense chasm between us all but will never truly allow us to know what it is like to be anyone other than ourselves.

Some food for thought, indeed, and I know that I will continue to ponder this, likely for the rest of my life. I hope you enjoy the selection of articles and other content this week. May it be a lovely, sunny one for all! 

Love,
LJ

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