From my weekly comments for Honors Colloquium:
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
–George Orwell, 1984
This week’s readings and discussion centered on the idea of language. We did not discuss language itself, which we would call semantics; rather, we centered on language as a concept. What species have it? What forms does it take? Into what form do we shape language and how does our language, in turn, shape our society? It was strange to think of language as an idea, as opposed to a universal constant. Having not considered language before, again rather than semantics, I found our discussion to be interesting and enlightening, and the readings even more so.
