Recently at school, we have been contemplating the following questions:
1) What is language?
2) What do I know about language?
By means of a mind map on the board, my colleague and I collected interesting interpretations and responses. Yesterday students put their views down on paper. Very often, we encourage them to follow the principle of écriture automatique (automatic writing). I was first introduced to this concept as part of my French course at university. Automatic writing is one of several forms of Surrealist automatism, conceived by Surrealism founder André Breton and others in the early 20th century. The subconscious is important in Surrealism, and one attractive way to explore it through écriture automatique involved people jotting down their random thoughts just before they dropped off to sleep.
Similarly, pupils and students are used to jotting down their unrefined thoughts as a means of exploring their personal motivations – as am I. Whilst I am fully aware that my response was coloured by an excellent book by David Bellos and his attempt to define translation; my response reads as follows:
Language is a mutually understandable communication tool, enabling speakers and language learners to express themselves and make themselves understood in different times and spaces for a certain purpose. But language and meaning are not the same thing. This is because meaning is yet another collaboratively constructed repository, which is in a constant state of change, redefinition and reconstitution defined by a given purpose.
I know how one goes about learning a language; how one might best learn a second language (a non-mother tongue). I also have ideas for language teaching, though I also know that teaching and learning are two separate worlds. Language learning involves forming a network of connections in the brain of the speaker. This is why each person learns in their own way. When we learn and use language, individuals are subconsciously looking for any connection that is reflected in our own lives – which thus creates very personal perceptions and meanings. Were this not the case, then surely we would, for example, all find the same jokes funny; we would all have the same writing style, the same speech style and we would all experience identical compliments and swearwords with the same degree of intensity. In short, we would not each be able to construct our own idiolect.
The second question above sought to elicit 'rules' that had been acquired and could be recalled. A few did surface – related to spelling, grammar or vocabulary. However, the free nature of the exercise meant that we remained preoccupied with philosophical issues, which is no bad thing. Language rules and quirks are necessarily linked to a given language pair (e.g. German and English) or language group – rather than to language learning per se. Still, écriture automatique and the other forms of expression that the school advocates provide learners with the freedom to explore their own learning in ways that were rarely, if ever, made available to me as a learner.
