Language

What is language? We are born into it, already attuned to the rhythm and syntax of our mother tongue. In our first years, we learn it almost miraculously, without a thought. We take it for granted. Language defies evolutionary accounts of its origin and transhumanist dreams of replacement. In a word, it is that uniquely human art form of the incarnate spirits we are; for it is only with words—sensuous symbols—that we can speak of the world. Through words—in all the multiplicity of concrete names and foreign tongues—we are united to the community of inexhaustible beings in the world and to the inexhaustible community of the One who made it.

In the beginning was the Word. Human beings, made in the image of God, share in this utterance, this Logos. Language, then, is foundational to our humanity. How we reference reality, how we translate from one language to another, how we communicate with one another—notably in an era where social media amplify our every passing thought—matters. Everything, from scientific discourse to the sacred liturgy, hangs on the way we use or abuse language. This issue of Humanum examines the freight that words carry, with particular reference to the "misology" and "cancel culture" that afflict contemporary discourse.

A society no longer bound by an underlying universal logos is bound only by an irrational rebellion against reality, by anti-logos. It lives by lies, inspired by the Author of Lies, and propagated by powerful engines of “social” media, and all of us, who repeat them “freely.” The architects of Newspeak banish “ungood” words (as per Orwell) exchanging them for “good” ones. Thus “liberty” and “patriotism”—now “fascist”—are exchanged for “democracy” which now means “equality” and “diversity.” Words like “fidelity,” “procreation,” “killing,” and “sex” cede to “consent” “reproduction,” “termination,” and “gender identity.” This is a collective anti-social media campaign against our common grasp of objective reality.

Poiesis delights and entertains us. A novel, a play, a myth retold, even a song: true art is never mere entertainment. In wonder, the poet receives the world for what it is: a theophany—and then, with wit and imagination, “fashions a world in the word,” inviting the reader to see with new eyes. Thus, literature becomes an education in humanity; myth a call to conversion; theatre the embodied expression of a people’s voice; and poetry an invitation to see past the mundane. And it is not only what we say that evokes the greatest wonder; the fact of language itself is the mystery, the very condition of our receiving the world.