Brave New Words

In his book, “The Renaissance in Perspective,” Philip Ralph says that Italian humanists first regarded the printing press as a “barbarous German contraption” that would devalue education. He highlights and explains the various growing pains associated with the cultural transitions of the Renaissance. One of the “new worlds” explored by the contemporaries of the era was language, both in terms of form and delivery. As witnesses to a period of technological discovery and expansion, maybe we can understand a little of what they felt.

I talked with my colleagues in Rhetoric 212 about the subject of language and communication, and we agreed that shifts in the way that people communicate have a huge impact on individual and cultural identity. The printing press was vital to the liberating message of Martin Luther, but that same message, combined with a revolutionary form of mass delivery, forced people to redefine their scope of influence. As the world opens up to include everyone within printing distance, the common person can evaluate where he stands in that world.

The world was also expanding in a more literal sense. Daniel and Aubrey, my Rhetoric 212 classmates, are both bilingual in English and Spanish. They have experience with translation and interpretation, and were able to tell me how difficult it is to convey meaning across a language. In fact, if I understand correctly, exact translation is nearly impossible. Each language builds its own framework of meaning. In the English version of The Book of Mormon, one of the writers says to “feast upon the Word of God.” In the Spanish translation, the word “feast” is replaced with a synonym for “study,” because a Spanish word for feast would be nonsensical in that context. As Renaissance adventurers braved new continents and territories, they were taking on the challenge of embracing entirely new cultures through language.

 The same principles apply to the transfer of meaning between oral and written methods of communication. The written word has been around for millennia, but as the Italians knew, it is a whole different story in the hands of the common man. Martin Luther’s translation of “verbum” into German angered the Catholic Church because it implied a more vulgar form of “word” to represent God’s Word. Similarly, if one wants to reach the (largely uneducated) masses, one has to be willing to dumb it down a little. This takes a great deal of understanding, not only of text and language, but also of culture and context. It also takes a willingness to embrace change, knowing that change is difficult and often painful.

The use of language builds worlds. I would like to quote Daniel as saying that it takes bravery to explore new worlds of communication and language. I agree, and I hope that we approach our daily communication with one another with Renaissance-level bravery, tempered by modern experience.