What is Language?

I remember watching a movie called Waking Life (2001) several years back, and feeling enlightened by the fact that words are just symbols that signify the ideas in our mind, they aren't the ideas themselves. Whether others pick up the ideas we mean to communicate depends on how they interpret our words. Since they're just symbols, miscommunication and different interpretations are possible.

Since then I've realized that it goes deeper than this simplistic idea. In my masters thesis, I'm making use of Jacques Derrida's idea of differance, which in French can mean "to differ" and it can mean "to defer" (postpone). It's a linguistic theory that argues signifiers (ie words) are not simply static signs that immutably point to static signified meanings (ie words' meanings). On the contrary, signifiers are always interpreted and reinterpreted in meaning by their positioning with other signifiers in the web of semiotic signification. Meaning depends on how the signifier (ie word) differs from other signifiers (ie other words) around it. Meaning is therefere always deffered (postponed) in an endless play of signification.

More concretely, this means that history is never a static given set of events that have definite uncontestable (objective) meanings. Instead, it means that history is always interpreted and reinterpreted, consisting of meanings always in an endless 'play' of differance with the present and the future.

Cultural identity is about "becoming" rather than "being" - it's a process, a production, rather than something to be archaeologically dug up.

Anyway, back to the question, what is language...it is a system of symbolisms and signification, but it's more complicated by that. And that's why words in one language can almost never have exact translations in other languages that capture fully their spectrum of meaning. Depending on how words have been used, developed, and "played" in fields of differance, they take on a whole spectrum of implied meanings. Which is why, for example, I had to give 4 different English words to my language exchange partner for translating the Cantonese wai daai - (偉大) - compassionate, selfless, considerate - which are all words that overlap with wai daai. And then this other Cantonese word (I forget what) that overlaps with aspects of being a good friend, a close friend, considerate, and always there to help in a very practical way (as in lending money in times of need, or talking and being a listener in times of emotional distress), but not necessarily including what the English "close friend" implies - such as talking about everything and anything (no matter if there is emotional distress or not). Closeness and being a good friend in HK culture then seems to differ from America in that it's much more practical-focused, and functional, whereas in US culture it's more emotional and romantic.