The Word

A word is so much of everything and nothing all at once. 

A beautiful old woman named Juana lives at a nursing home a few streets down from me. She is mute, deaf, and needs help eating meals. As I feed her the same squash soup she eats every day for dinner, she swallows every spoonful contentedly without reaction. When I help her to wash it down with some water, however, there are times when she tells me she wants more to drink.

How does she say this, though, without actually "saying" it?

She opens her eyes widely and leans toward the cup of water with sudden urgency. She says everything with her body. 

Words are one of the vehicles through which we convey our deepest selves to the many “others” of the world. Words, as inherently saturated with artistic power as they might be, will ALWAYS fall short of this task. We can only ever talk about an experience, for example, but we can never experience an experience fully solely by discussing it. 

Luckily for Juana, I would argue that more responsibility in any given language exchange falls on the interpreter, rather than on the communicator. 

What happens chemically in our minds when we interact with language? A very basic comprehension of this incredibly complex neurological process has led me to deduce the following about language data processing:

The left hemisphere of our brain categorizes incoming data into linear, comprehensible material, while the right side of the brain (connected more to the “intuition”) tries to grasp the concept that floats behind, in and around the linear data that is being transmitted into the left side. The left side categorizes specific information and the right side recognizes whole patterns.

So when words flood into our minds we compute and conceptualize the data. It’s like a truck comes in carrying specific vernacular cargo and transports the material between hemispheres, taking logic itself and transforming it from phonics to philosophy, or from dialogue to diagnosis. We store data, and then we “story” it. 

We find ourselves caught up in a dance. 

Language communication/interpretation is neither pure art nor pure science, but any exchange of this nature unequivacally contains a heavy dose of both. 

In “The Dancing Wu Li Masters,” author Gary Zekav writes, “The Chinese language does not use an alphabet like western languages. Each word in Chinese is depicted by a character, which is a line drawing. (Sometimes two or more characters are combined to form different meanings.) This is why it is difficult to translate Chinese into English. Good translations require a translator who is both a poet and a linguist.”

微软公司生产的文字处理软件

(This is the result I got of searching for the definition of the word "word" in Chinese on the internet)

This is why it is not only difficult to translate Chinese into English, but difficult to translate any given thought into some kind of interpretable tool. All we have, after all, are lines, characters, or distinct sound waves (that emerge as a result of moving our mouths and releasing our voice in a specific way) to convey what we are trying to say. It’s why any piece of communication must be stripped of any unmerited intrinsic power or weightiness that we tend to ascribe to it (aside from calling upon its artistic value, which has its purpose, naturally). It’s why as interpreters (human beings), we’re charged with the task of approaching our lives as both linguists and poets – not just one or the other. 

Learning another language – speaking it, understanding it, and participating in the exchange of it – involves the same life-governing process that we partake in throughout our lives: the dance of meaning-making. If we can learn to dance in such heightened cognitive environments as learning a foreign language, where nothing is comfortable and where most of the information is new, we will dance with grace and fluidity with everything around us. Interpreting language will remind us that we are the authors of our own lives. 

“The Wu Li Masters know that ‘science’ and ‘religion’ are only dances, and that those who follow them are dancers. The dancers may claim to follow 'truth' or claim to seek 'reality,' but the Wu Li Masters know better. They know that the true love of all dancers is dancing.” 

– Gary Zekav

The Pauses

The doubtful pauses or moments of deep, speechless concentration that occur when a language learner (LL) searches for the accurate word/phrasing to convey his/her thoughts are of crucial importance.

A learner might say (having been offered a meal but having eaten already), for example, “No thank you, I am not hungry. I am very....” and then pause for several moments, during which the language teacher (LT) desperately wants to say the word “full” to complete the learner’s sentence and move forward with the conversation. Moments like this are fertile ground for self-discovery and effective learning when nurtured properly. They're also fragile and scary.

A teacher is always temped to fill the pause with information that he/she knows belongs there according to his/her linguistic database, while a learner is tempted to fill the space with some modified, less accurate phrasing just to rush past the vulnerable place of feeling unsure of how to properly express themselves in such situations.

The desire to fill this sacred space on behalf of the teacher comes from one of two places in the teacher’s mind, and should be avoided at all costs (unless overtly warranted). 

The first possible origin of the desire to fill the speechless space arises from a teacher’s desire to eliminate the learner’s discomfort, which for whatever reason he/she has deemed his/her responsibility to do. 

The perceived discomfort of the learner on behalf of the teacher develops either from a societally instilled notion that to be in silence means to be uncomfortable, or from the idea that while learning a new skill one can never possibly make mistakes or stumble their way through something. In other words, the teacher believes that either silence or not knowing a piece of information is very awkward, and has thus deemed it crucial to mitigate the learner's discomfort by midwifing the answer.

The second possible origin of the desire to eliminate speechless silence on behalf of the teacher is that the teacher has simply become impatient, bored by the amount of time required for the learner to arrive at the effectively communicated landing point and wishes to spend time doing something else.

Discomfort, when effectively utilized, can be one of the most powerful tools of learning. Though discomfort itself is only ever perceived but never truly experienced independently of the mind, it can very quickly motivate a learner to internalize any information that will lead them to feel less uncomfortable in future situations. Thus, in a moment of discomfort such as that which is experienced during an “awkward” pause, a learner will benefit far more from having to endure the discomfort of “not knowing” before finally “arriving,” (for usually the learner already HAS the information necessary but requires time to sift through their knowledge database before accessing it) than to be passively given the linguistic item for which he/she had been searching. Of course, there are times when a learner simply does not know the answer. In those cases, especially when the learner directly solicits said information from the teacher, the teacher should obviously provide the missing information in the form of novel instruction.

On the first page of her book, “Improvisation for the Theater,” Viola Spolin writes, “We learn through experience and by experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything.” This concept is as true as ever when it comes to fumbling our way through learning a foreign language. Pauses of thoughtful concentration offer tiny patches of soil from which experiential learning can germinate if properly planted.

So how can this tendency to arrogantly intrude upon another person's speech be remedied?

Firstly, unsolicited advice or help should always be withheld unless absolutely warranted. In order to confront and overcome the first origin of the desire to fill silence, a teacher could practice familiarizing himself/herself with silence (so as to no longer associate it with discomfort, since silence between two individuals should be no more uncomfortable than speech, however social habits run deep), practicing more intense eye contact on a daily basis (because this is another pressure put on both LL and LT which can induce nerves and haphazard speech), and cultivating patience by learning a foreign language himself/herself and understanding the painstaking but gratifying nature of the process itself.

If the case of the second reason behind the teacher's desire to fill space applies in any given situation, we as learners are in serious trouble because the teacher comprehends neither the needs of the learner, nor the sanctity of learning in general.