TOK Blog Project

The way of knowing that reflects me is language. I find language to be the clearest way of expressing a knowledge claim. Words are usually sufficient for me as a knower. A broader range of language entails broader knowledge; the more words and the more languages a person knows, the more concepts they can understand, due to the direct correlation between language, culture, and therefore meaning. Emotion and perception can be very misleading, while language is far less beguiling, especially in the context of my area of knowledge: history.

For me, history is a very important area of knowing. History allows me to reflect upon the present, using deductions based on past events to influence my future decisions. Language is essential for the comprehension of history. Language allows a knower to understand different viewpoints of a wide variety of people regarding any historical event. For example, in history class we have been studying various aspects of modern history. As we read the book, Mastering Modern World History, by Norman Lowe, we are often introduced to revisionist views on historical events. These different historians use their language - which, don't forget, has been influenced by their culture - to express new points of view. Franco was originally seen as a terrible fascist dictator in Spain simply for being aligned with Hitler, but revisionist historians have read historical accounts and then used their own language to describe their analysis of events, creating the idea that Franco actually solved a lot of problems in Spain in the mid-90's. Often these revisionist historians are native Spanish as well, so their culture and their different language provides a different twist on the interpretation of events. Another example of language facilitating knowing history is in my Spanish class. I am reading the book El Laberinto de la Soledad, by Octavio Paz, a book which tries to decipher the character of the Mexican. Because it is written by a Mexican, and because I am reading it in Spanish, I have these different perspectives expressed by the language I know it in. The fact that I know it in Spanish helps me understand it better; instead of needing a translation into English, I learn the history in the way it was presented, in the words whose meanings are inexplicable in English. My comprehension is greater because of this. In TOK class, language and history were used when we read Weekly World News. They discussed historical events in far-fetched articles such as a female movement to take over the world. They discussed historical events that were "obviously" plots of women, but because of the absurd language used I was able to discern the history to be false. Language really allows different viewpoints on history, and because of the varying language us knowers can analyze and interpret differently.

Of course, fallacies occur when language is used as a means of "knowing" history. When history is read from a book, as it is in class, the language is generally straightforward and unambiguous. However, when history is dictated or viewpoints are expressed in speech, the guile of language becomes visible. Language can be subject to some of the other ways of knowing, especially emotion and perception. For example, when speaking with any person about a very recent event, the tone of their voice and the language they use may cause doubt in a person regarding what actually happened. While written history is more direct and the knower can usually evaluate the language from the exact words that are written, the variety of spoken language makes oral history more apt to be misunderstood. It is difficult to comprehend when a person talks to you about an event sarcastically - they could simply be sardonic, or the language they are using, while dry, is actually an expression of what happened.

Polysemy is another interesting facet of language. A word that is polysemous has more than one meaning. When speaking about history, a word used to express an event can be confused because of these multiple meanings. This is evident in oral and written history. For example, in the book Santa Evita, the author, Tomas Eloy Martinez, writes: "Mito in my native tongue is not only "myth" but also the name of a bird that no one can see, and story means "search," "inquiry": the text is a search for the invisible, or the stillness of what flies." p.54. This Spanish word with different meanings can create vastly different connotations based on the interpretation.

History is very interesting, though, because language can completely alter what actually happened. We can make as many interpretations as we want based on the language that presents the history to us, but we truly can never know what happened. History uses language as a means of reinventing a past reality. In the book I am reading, Santa Evita, the author writes about how Eva Peron was changed throughout time. Eloy Martinez writes: "She ceased to be what she said and what she did to become what people say she said and what people say she did." p. 13. There may be a basis of truth to what she did, yes, but the language of people created Eva Peron as an infallible structure of hope, a saint, which she probably was not. Our language dictates history. Our varying expressions dictate how historical events are recorded, and in turn the evaluations we make based on them.

I would like to leave you with a final quote from the book Santa Evita that I think sums up this idea nicely:

"That, I thought, is where written language falls short. It can bring back to life feelings, lost time, chance circumstances that link one fact to another, but it can't bring reality back to life. I didn't yet know - and it would take longer still for me to feel it - that reality doesn't come back to life: it is born in a different way, it is transfigured, it reinvents itself in novels. I didn't know that the syntax or the tones of voice of the characters return with a different air about them and that, as they pass through the sieves of written language, they become something else." p. 73

Glossary:

language - communication of meaning in any way
knower - a person receiving information and knowledge claims; "knows" an area such as history
knowledge claim - a claim made by a knower that they "know" something, whether it be by acquaintance or by the description of other knowers
emotion - any sort of feeling - happiness, anger, sadness - usually expressed
perception - an awareness or knowledge derived from the senses
culture - the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a certain ethnic, social, age, collegiate, etc group; it can be said that everyone has a unique personal culture


Bibliography:

Unidentified Weekly World News articles
Lowe, Norman. Mastering Modern World History. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.
Paz, Octavio. El Laberinto de la Soledad. New York, N.Y: Penguin, 1997. Print.
Martínez, Tomás Eloy. Santa Evita. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.


Final note: this video we watched in history is another example of how varying language is used to express different views on past events, due to the range of culture and opinion, manifest in language, of the many historians
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-554458576098159340#docid=-2736111333508202187