Language That Works

In order to word things more pre­cisely, lan­guage sys­tems have devel­oped in var­i­ous fields of study. For the most part, they work pretty well and have their place. On the other hand, they serve as a way to main­tain cer­tain monop­o­lies. In the Mid­dle Ages, Law, Med­i­cine, and The­ol­ogy cre­ated pri­vate lan­guage sys­tems — mostly to sep­a­rate the pro­fes­sion­als from the com­mon­ers. To a great degree, that is still true today. Many other fields of study have fol­lowed suit. Pro­gres­sively, fewer and fewer peo­ple speak much of the same lan­guage. Other than sports and cur­rent events, most of us do not have much in ver­bal com­mon.
The phrase “infant tac­tile stim­u­la­tion” appears in med­ical jour­nals. It sounds so high-minded and pro­fes­sional. “Infant tac­tile stim­u­la­tion” is when you hug a baby. What is wrong with just say­ing, “hug the baby?” Does lan­guage have to have such Orwellian char­ac­ter­is­tics? Can we not just say how we feel and what we want in sim­ple terms? Have we been so intim­i­dated by the “offi­cial” world around us that we are afraid to speak our minds in the sim­ple words that mat­ter most? Must we always speak from the head instead of the heart?
Each denom­i­na­tion has its own in-house lan­guage sys­tem. Each one arises from his­tory and usu­ally a key reli­gious per­son­al­ity or philoso­pher. It unites a few at the expense of bridg­ing to the many. Spe­cial lan­guage sys­tems work like a pri­vate hand­shake. They give a sense of nar­cis­sis­tic inclu­sion cou­pled with a con­de­scend­ing exclu­sion. It is a game played at many lev­els and in a vari­ety of sec­u­lar cir­cles as well.
Elite-sounding terms have their day. Terms such as plu­ral­ism, diver­sity, and post­mod­ern, are begin­ning to pass from schol­arly lit­er­a­ture. The new words of the past few decades are becom­ing old words. They had their day in the sun. In the end, they did their part in divid­ing peo­ple in the name of unit­ing them. The words that mat­ter most are time­less. “I love you” goes back well beyond any ster­ile “sci­en­tific” descrip­tive lan­guage. It is some­thing that just can­not be said any other way and con­vey the same depth of mean­ing. Sim­ple terms with pro­found mean­ing expose the heart and make us vul­ner­a­ble. They are for the spir­i­tu­ally brave.
Say what you mean! Life is an adven­ture of the heart, not a term paper.