When Words Fail

In the excerpts from "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" by John Locke, he is concerned with words and language. Their complexities, imperfections, uncertainty, how they fail. I was really interested in his ideas about the failure of words and/or language.

Locke believed that words can have different meanings based on their signification and that they can fail when they don't meet the end they were created for. Locke states that language is made to communicate ideas from one man to another, to communicate that idea with quickness and ease and that they have to convey knowledge. Language fails when it doesn't do any of those three things. Language fails when "men have names in their mouth, without any determinate ideas in their minds" (Locke, 825). 

Failure of language also happens when man has complex ideas and is without a name for them. He is hindered in his discourse (Locke, 825). Locke states, “Men fail of conveying their thoughts with all the quickness and ease that may be, when they have complex ideas without having any distinct names for them. This is sometimes the fault of the language itself, which has not in it a sound yet applied to such a signification; and sometimes the fault of the man, who has not yet learned the name for that idea he would show another” (Locke, 825).

At first I was very confused by this statement. I wasn't sure what he meant by "fault of the language" or "fault of the man". After breaking down the statement, I think I was able to better understand what he was trying to say. When Locke says "This is sometimes the fault of the language itself, which has not in it a sound yet applied to such a signification", it made me think of foreign languages (Locke,825). Many foreign languages have very complex meanings for a word or concept. Foreign languages can be very nuanced. You could give a person a simple english definition of the word or idea, but a person would never be able to fully understand it. Some concepts or ideas or words are so complex and have so many nuances that the english language does not have the words to express the ideas to the extent that is needed. The english language does not have "a sound yet applied to such a signification" to explain certain foreign language words/concepts. 

The second thing that confused me was the fault of man. "Sometimes the fault of the man, who has not yet learned the name for that idea he would show another” (Locke, 825) You cannot really fault a man for not having the words to express their ideas or for having a different understanding of the word. This made me think about an example we used in class, the word cow. A man who doesn't know the name cow and is seeing one for the first time is going to have a harder time communicating the idea of a cow to another man. It would not be communicated quickly or easily which would mean that language or words fail. 

If the same sign is not used for the same idea, if the same words are used for one idea sometimes and used for another idea at another time, language and communication will fail. If a man uses a word that he has diverted form its common use, the idea will not be conveyed well to others and he will be misunderstood.

Work Cited

Locke, John. "From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding." The Rhetorical Tradition: Reading  from Classical Times to the Present, Second Edition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 814-827.