Nature of Language / Heidegger in the Essay

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Nature of Language / Heidegger

In "The Nature of Language" Heidegger (1982) posits that most people would say that they are close to language because they speak it -- but it is not that simple. He claims that our relation to language is "vague, obscure" -- and even -- "almost speechless" (p. 58). This notion makes our relationship to language much more complicated if we are to assume that what Heidegger says is correct. Not only is the idea complex, but it is nearly incomprehensible. Isn't language, after all, about speech? How can our relationship to it thus be something deemed as speechless? To complicate matters even further, Heidegger says that philosophers have come up with what is called "metalanguage" for which to use as the focus of their examination of different languages. Heidegger states: "Metalinguistics is the metaphysics of the thoroughgoing technicalization of all languages into the sole operative instrument of interplanetary information. Metalanguage and sputnik, metalinguistic and rocketry are the same" (1982, p. 58). While all of this may be so, and Heidegger notes that this type of examination into language is important, it doesn't mean that the experience of language is any less important.

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How do we have an experience with language? While we may think that merely speaking words is equivalent to experiencing language, Heidegger (1982) insists that it is not the same at all. Language doesn't bring us to language, he argues, but rather it is a barrier for us, keeping us away from language. He claims that facts we speak about, things that happen to us, etc. are just things that we are speaking about, but not the true essence of language. So what is the true essence of language? According to Heidegger, the true essence of language, the true experience that is, hits us when we are, rather, at a loss for words. "Then we leave unspoken what we have in mind and, without rightly giving it thought, undergo moments in which language itself has distantly and fleetingly touch us….....

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