Abbas Husain is a language teaching specialist. Having served in that capacity at Karachi University, Aga Khan University and the Aga Khan Foundation, he now conducts his own workshops where he discourses on the effective methods for teaching languages in a relaxed classroom. He has also authored a series of three textbooks, published by Oxford University Press for whom he is now working on a new series of English textbooks for college level.
Q. Just how much could language matter to humanity?
A. Let me start with a strange example. Alfred Korzybsky was a genius of mathematics and language who died in 1950. Before the Second World War Korzybsky noticed that there was one man slowly rising in the German political structure whose speeches were dangerous because of the certain metaphors that he kept using. The fact was confirmed later of course. Korzybsky wrote to all the presidents and the prime ministers, saying that ‘take care here is a man rising, getting more and more powerful and look at the kind of things he is getting at; pay attention to this. Listen this is very serious.’ Only one person, a secretary wrote back ‘thank you for the letter, it has been received and it will be read with due consideration.” And then we know what happened, exactly as Korzybsky had foretold. That’s incredible. I mean, a man can have a theory anytime, but to actually apply it to the real world, that is the proof of the theory itself.
Q. Do you think theories like these can also be applied to ordinary people to help solve their problem?
A. Yes. Korzybsky said that proper use of language keeps you sane, improper use makes you insane. He was actually aware of the dilemmas that people got themselves into because of the words they used to express themselves. Human beings, he said, are also symbol-bound: there are people who enter room and as they see roses they immediately get an asthmatic attack, even though the roses are artificial. There are no pollens to cause asthma but the word ‘rose’ is enough to cause the attack – one can deduce from this fact that the possibility of the word itself functions in these kind of things in a multitude of relationships.
Q. Does language have other functions than mere communications between people?
A. Halliday lists seven. To get our material needs satisfied (‘I want’), to change the behaviour or beliefs of others (‘Do as I tell you’), to establish or reflect personal relationships with others (‘me and you’), to express our perception of ourselves (‘Here I come’), to seek new knowledge (‘tell me why?’), to exercise the imagination (‘let’s pretend’), to describe and criticize situations or ideas (‘I’ve got something to tell you’). Frank Smith has extended his list to include three more. For fun (puns, jokes, riddles), to establish agreement or expectations (statues, laws, regulations, agreements, contracts) and as a record of the past (records, histories, diaries, notes, scores).
Q. But we can already see that some of the functions you have listed can be done through other means too. For instance, you can exercise the imagination through pantomime or painting, which do not involve language at all.
A. For each thing that language does there is something available to do it – other than language. But not one medium does all the things that language does. That is why language is a humane attribute, and not have language is to be dumb. And therefore be an animal. So therefore I twist that word as well: “Language is what you grow in; growth is what you language in,” the words, you use are a measure of your growth.
Q. Earlier you said that people become insane when they don’t use words in their proper sense. Now you have shown us how language is spread not just over our urgent needs but our whole lives. I feel tempted to ask you exactly what would you mean by ‘improper’ use of words in these various contexts?
A. There we are into Korzybsky’s what he calls ‘razors’ or ‘weapons’. He says take care of the word ‘all’ or ‘everybody’ and the opposite ‘none’ or ‘never’ and ‘nobody’. He says that allness statements are wrong because they claim that you know more than you actually know. The moment you say “all taxi drivers do…..” you are wrong because they don’t. There must be at least one who doesn’t. The moment you say, “all Pathans (or simply Pathans)” then what are you doing? You are perpetuating prejudice, and claiming that you know all pathans. But you don’t. Then you go much worse, you say “all Jews’. But how many Jews have you met?
Another razor is ‘process’; things are in a state of process. So therefore you use words like ‘either, or’. ‘Either, or’ assumes that things have only two sides. But they don’t. So you must be alert to the whole issue.
You cannot say ‘thins are either hot or cold’, there are other degrees of temperature. You can’t say ‘person is either cruel or kind,’ ‘either saint or sinner’. So therefore to be able to understand that people are on some kind of a scale makes you immediately aware … you don’t make claims. For example, if you are discussing an institution both of us have been a part of. I am praising that school, and you are saying that school is ridiculous. We are both using the same word (i.e. ‘that school’). But I am talking of that school as it was in 1969. You are talking of that school as it was in 1979. So we are talking about two different stages in its history. Both of us might be right, in our own truths.
Then there is ‘meaning.’ They assumption is the real meaning of anything, the relativity of meaning; the idea that words have meanings. Actually words don’t have meanings, people have meanings. People put meanings in the words and then claim that the words have it. But the words don’t have it. So look at the enormous confusion that is going on in the world about the true meaning of the Biblical verses and the Quranic verses, that people have been arguing about through the centuries.
Then there are the ‘tools of alertness’. Use them to be cautious of viciousness of the language. Be alert to the politicians, advertisers, and other people in your daily life who try to capture your mind by breaking these rules.