John Frontczak

Senior Seminar, 8

Wok Language

A language is an artificial construct that is the agreed upon meanings or certain intended

patterns, be them symbols, motions, sounds, etc. Due to its created nature language can be ambiguous,

hard to define, and misinterpreted. This causes words and language to be consistently used and

dangerous in the modern academic model. A great deal of what we learn from is now written books, or

spoken lectures which are for the most part taken at face value as true; however, many people gain and

understand different aspects after hearing or seeing the same words. A nice example of where this is

shown is in Lewis Carroll's The Jabberwock in which a number of words without any agreed meaning at

the time were used, though people still understood the poem and gave meaning to the 'non-sense'

words. The meanings of those words are thought to be vastly different definitions by different people,

though a sense of meaning is still gained. This reveals that humans give different meanings to the same

subject matter, and thus misinterpretations occur and meaning is lost in translation.