Words and what they do

Right. I was walking back home on a busy road and, as it usually happens, my mind drifted to things of the past. (I guess it's a way of shutting off the noise.)

At university, I have learned things that I can't say I am actually using in my day to day life or that could be classed as "practical" or particularly marketable. I have studied linguistics, the structure of a discourse and its rhetorical elements, pragmatics, grammar, stylistics, etc. I have basically studied the ways words come to have a certain build, where they came from, how I can use them to express my feelings or to persuade an audience of an opinion or truth.

So I was just pondering on the reason why a university lecturer would consider all these subjects as being necessary for a philology student. Well, I think it's because the more I understand about a certain topic, the easier it will be to explain it in simple terms to, let's say, children in school learning about a metaphor or a verb. Probably because when one decides "to do" philology at university, they do it, as the word itself shows, because they love the Word, its power and its ability to create. Or just because they love feeling academic, talking the same language as the rest of their fellow citizens but using terms that tickle their minds and that... they will probably never use in a family environment or even when teaching children about a what a verb is and how a metaphor works.

Yes, I've studied things that some may be seen as useless. I am glad I did. There has always been in me the passion for learning but for understanding words and how they function together especially. Perhaps because all the sciences built around them engage my abstract thinking (unlike Maths) or because I have had so much to do with their destructive potential.

I find myself a bit nostalgic sometimes when meditating on the state of affairs in education these days. (Note the pompous, rather sarcastic tone.) It's all about what one can do at the end of a course. And that's what pays the bills at the end of the day. But what about those things that teach people how to speak kindly to each other to send a message across? How about learning more about our cultural roots and identity through the study of the language we speak? How about studying those things that turn us into beings with feelings and aspirations rather than merely tax payers or species propagators?

Comments welcome :)

How Reading Turned into a Necessity

It all started with not being able to express myself. Writing essays in primary and high school were always a torment. Structuring my thoughts and finding the right words to deliver them posed a great mental barrier that I could hardly surpass. Repetitions were ripe, set patterns in which I could write my paragraphs were the crutch that helped me limp to the end of a mechanical and lifeless sentence.

Reading was a chore up until I was 14. My mum kept pestering me with: "reading will improve your vocabulary". It annoyed me to high heaven! (Probably because I was fully aware of how much my vocabulary needed improving). "Kenilworth" by Walter Scott was the first book that I read with my mum's challenge in my head. I don't remember anything that I read in that book. Just that it was about princes and castles and love matters, etc. (I am awful when it comes to remembering story lines! I only seem to remember fragments of information that made an impression upon my mind because of their moral or artistic sides.) And since then, I can say that my passion for reading started.

I soon realised that my mum was right. But there was so much more to reading. It uncovered universes uniquely designed through their laws, characters and moeurs, as the French would put it. Those universes enriched and brought light to mine. They helped me understand people a lot more, they helped me improve my vocabulary as my patient mother prophesied and opened my mind to Understanding and Wisdom. Nonetheless, I don't profess to be wise or of sound understanding; just to have dabbled a bit with the said concepts to create some kind of "normality" and morality for my universe.

When it comes to characters, something occurred to me as I was finishing the trilogy by Dave Pelzer: that when I read a book for a while (and I have been spending quite a bit on these ones), some characters become part of my life. Like friends almost. Picking up the book to follow on with the story is the equivalent of saying Hi to these faceless people. Or trying to help solve their problems or getting some inspiration for how to solve mine as I see how they solve or don't solve theirs. Reading really stops my brain from going dead. But it doesn't stop here...