Can language capture the enormity of experience? The answer to this question has to be no. Experiences, especially enormous ones, are unique to those who experience them. You cannot capture the enormity of a jaw-dropping experience with words, that’s what makes the experience so powerful. Language can give the audience some idea of the experience, but ultimately the experience belongs to the people who were there.
Look at the difference between going to a playoff football game and reading about it, listening to it, or watching it. Reading about the game after it happens gives the reader no idea about what happened. Sure they have the outcome and a few important plays, but they can’t experience the game like those who were there. Listening to the game gives the audience a better idea of the experience, but it is still not close to the real thing. The audience depends on the reactions of the commentator to visualize the events. Watching the game on television gets the audience closer to experiencing the real thing because they can now see and hear the events. Still, watching the game is different from being there. In the end, the only way to capture the enormity of an experience is to be there in person. Language can bring the audience closer to an experience, but there is no substitute for being there.
Using a football game is a simple way to look at this issue, but the same principles apply to any experience. For an experience to be real it comes down to the five senses: see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. There is no way to truly experience something without all of these. The problem with language is that the audience has to use their imagination because they are not present for the experience. The audience will have their own experience but it won’t be the same as the writer or speaker. There is nothing wrong with this though. In the end the enormity of an experience is unique to those who experience it.
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I agree that language cannot completely capture an experience in the same way that real life does. Everything is situational; this concept is seen in every aspect of language and rhetoric. In the football scenario discussed here, it is true that someone who simply listens to a game on the radio does not get the same experience as if they were at the game themselves, but as stated above, language does help to give the listener at least an image of what the experience would be like if they were at the game. Ultimately, the reason that simply hearing or reading about something through the use of language cannot compare to real life experience is that everybody perceives things differently. Hearing a game being broadcast on the radio only gives the listener the perspective of the commentator. In the same way, reading a book only gives the perspective of the author.
ReplyDeleteLanguage does provide the opportunity to understand a second perspective related to a particular experience. For people who may have lived through a similar situation, reading about that situation from a second person not only allows the reader to relive the experience, but gives him or her a whole new "take" on what happened. Not everybody experiences things in the same way that other people do, and learning how other people might have perceived a similar situation might help to create a level of understanding for those with different opinions or might even help to reinforce perceptions for those with similar opinions on the situation.
Depending on how well the author is able to depict their perspective through the use of language, a reader who has no prior experience on a topic can potentially develop a level of understanding with the author's experience. For something that most people don't experience on their own, such as Lowell's boot camp and training experiences to become a Navy SEAL, reading about the author's experience may be the only way to develop this understanding and, especially for Lowell, a level of respect and admiration for the author. In his story, if he hadn't developed this level of understanding, his ethos might not have been as strong and readers would not be able to understand his background. Though readers such as myself have never, and probably will never, experience something comparable to Lowell's experience, it is possible to develop some sort of understanding of what he went through to become the person he became. This is what language can do for an experience; though it cannot capture every aspect of the experience as a whole, it can develop some sort of partial experience for the reader to relate to.