Achebe talks about the importance of language in his essay, “Language and the Destiny of Man”. He explains how without language society would be at a loss and with distorted language society can still end up at a loss. He talks about the importance of having language in the first place and also how important it is to use it correctly.
I did not find a specific commercial or ad that used language in a distorted way, because I wanted to mention music and just common conversations. In music today I believe there are a lot of distortions of language, do we ever truly know what an artist is trying to convey? We can guess and try to interpret but all we will have is just that a guess. Due to this an artist may be trying to send out a certain message but through their lyrics or made up words the listeners may hear something completely different than what was intended. I notice in music and in internet lingo the most distortion of language. There are a lot of misconceptions during a chat conversation with someone online or through text messaging. When words are used to say one thing and the person reading it comprehends it to mean something else that can cause a lot of confusion or even arguments. If you text someone “ya chris is sick!” do you mean he is sick like illness sick or is he sick like the slang word for cool? Without knowing tone of voice or facial expressions language can be misread or through music it can be misheard.
Without language we would not be able to communicate with eachother which would eliminate any sort of education. Even the use of your hands to send a message to someone is using language. If we eliminated all language then there would be nothing but existence and loneliness. Relationships would be impossible, learning would be impossible, progression would be impossible. Nothing would get better things would just stay the same always. As we mentioned in class, in the book of Genesis the first thing that God tells Adam to do is name the animals. This shows the importance of language even in the beginning of time.
Since we are blessed with the gift of education and language and the capability of so many things because of those things, we should try to not abuse it or distort it. This will only put us back at square one where we lack communication with eachother which is the same as not having language at all.
I think Achebe’s points about language make a lot of sense in the importance he gives it. Language may be one of the most important aspects of life.
