“A picture is worth a thousand words,” says the old
adage. For me, this always raises the
question, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a word worth?”
The question is a fiddly one. A single word can be worth nothing, or it can
be worth—well, a thousand words. The four letters ‘w-o-r-d’ themselves are a
good example. It has become common in
modern speech to say ‘word’ in response to something, or indeed to nothing at
all. If you ask the speaker to explain
what they mean, your results may vary.
In fact, the use of ‘word’ in this capacity means so many different
things that it effectively means nothing.
It becomes a puff of air, nothing more than the empty utterance of a
semi-vowel, vowel, liquid, and stop. It’s something to say, totally detached
from any meaning at all.
Another word that has suffered non-meaning starts with the
interdental unvoiced fricative and ends with the palatal unvoiced stop. (Also, it rhymes with ‘duck.’) If you ever
listen to people use this word, especially Chef Gordon Ramsay, you will notice
that it means absolutely nothing—just something to say, albeit something rude
to say.
‘Word’ and assorted vulgarities, however, and not the only
words affected by the meaninglessness phenomenon. ‘Like’ also comes to mind. I am certain that you can think of any number
of expressions, most of them interjections, which have absolutely no definitive
meaning.
So, a word can be worth nothing. Or, it can be worth thousands of words. Pick up the Oxford English Dictionary and
look up ‘word.’ The definition is, depending on the size of the print and the
pages in your copy, about a page long.
Suddenly those four linguistic phonemes are worth more information than
can be easily conveyed by a dictionary, and you would be hard-pressed to find a
picture to portray it.
I am, if you have not already surmised, obsessed with words
and linguistics. The expression ‘word
nerd’ is hardly satisfactory. In fact, I
think of words like candy—sweet, delicious candy. I simply enjoy turning words over in my mouth
and feeling the way they are formed.
Some words, however, become more delicious in the presence of other
words; context affects the flavor of each one.
They are delicious because of the way it feels to speak them, the way
they sound, and what they mean.
One of my favorite examples of the deliciousness of words is
Richard Snyder’s poem “A Mongoloid Child Handling Shells on the Beach”:
She turns them over in her slow
hands,
As did the sea sending them to her;
Broken bits from the mazarine maze,
They are the calmest things on this
sand.
The unbroken children splash and
shout,
Rough as surf, gay as their nesting
towels.
But she plays soberly with the
sea’s
Small change and hums back to it
its slow vowels. (1-8)
This is an excellent example of how familiar words can be exotic
when used in a certain way; alliteration and consonance have a way of doing
that. The words themselves, laced with sibilance and long vowels, mimic the sounds of ocean breakers. It
really is beautiful.
If common words have so much effect in the context of
reality—note the supernatural meaning they convey to the Down Syndrome child’s
communion with nature—imagine what unfamiliar words might do.
I think of unfamiliar words as the language of the fantastic. I do not mean made up words; I mean actual
English words that are in actual English dictionaries but are not used in
commonplace vocabulary. This is because fantasy relies on strangeness.
“Speculative fiction by definition is geared toward an audience
that wants strangeness” (20), writes Orson Scott Card. He also notes that “one of the greatest
values of speculative fiction is that creating a strange imaginary world is
often the best way to help readers see the real world through fresh eyes” (61-62).
Strange words, by which I mean unfamiliar words, are an
excellent way to create and define imaginary worlds and give us fresh eyes. One of my favorite authors, Stephen R.
Donaldson, excels in the use of obscure, archaic, or simply uncommon words to
do this. He could easily use more
vernacular language and convey the same things, but by choosing something
unusual, he adds to a sense of this literature of the strange.
For example, in his Chronicles
of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Donaldson frequently describes his
powerful characters as ‘puissant’ rather than ‘powerful.’ He uses ‘preternatural’ in place of ‘unnatural’
or ‘supernatural.’ Of course, there are
some slight differences in connotation in these word choices, and in the
literary context of the story, it makes a lot of sense. ‘Puissant’ also
connotes ‘potent,’ and the main character, in addition to being impotent, also
feels a total sense of powerlessness. ‘Preternatural’
connotes something aberrant and outside of nature, rather than just against or
greater than it.
The word choices are important for their literary symbolism,
but their delicious strangeness contributes to the unfamiliarity of the milieu
that Donaldson has created. The words function
far beyond their meaning and paint a picture for us. A picture that is worth—well, a thousand
words.
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Works Cited
Card, Orson Scott. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books, 1990.
Snyder, Richard. “A Mongoloid Child Handling Shells on the
Beach.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Seventh ed.
Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Longman, 1999. 732
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Afterthoughts:
Immediately after
writing “If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a word worth,” I spent
about 30 minutes trying to find a clever pun about Romantic era poets before
giving up and finishing the post.
If you use ‘puissant’
and ‘preternatural’ in your everyday vocabulary, I want to be your new best
friend.
If you also tried to
make a Wordsworth pun, I want to be your new best friend.
If you actually came
up with a good Wordsworth pun, please leave it in the comments along with any
other thoughts you might like to share.
