Linguistics

I heard an interesting paper today read by Dr. Doug Moo, a leader in the field of biblical translation and New Testament studies. I heard a term I'd never heard before- "computational linguistics."

It means the process of using search engines to see what sorts of words and phrases are in common usage, what they mean, and how those meanings have evolved over time. Search Google for a word's meaning to see an example- it'll have a chart showing the word's usage over the last two hundred years.

I was also gratified personally to hear such a distinguished scholar express a view that I've held privately for a while now- namely, that linguistics is a descriptive enterprise, rather than a prescriptive one.

My education came, primarily, at the hands of prescriptivists, who, I think, suspect any decoupling of words and meaning as leading to the postmodern morass of subjectivity that any sane person rightly fears. However, language is an ever-changing thing because it's practiced by living, breathing people, and "proper English" is always elusive. Whose English is proper?

My dad ran an inner city ministry, and as a result I grew up hearing and occasionally speaking what I've come to know as African American Vernacular English. While recognizing that it's grammar and syntax differed from the English I learned in school, sometimes significantly, I could also recognize, even as a kid, that it's grammar and syntax were internally consistent. And that seemed to me to dispel the notion that it was "bad English." Rather, it was English that played by different rules- but rules there were.

Then as I got older and studied German in college, I began to realize that the German spoken in my house by my parents was decidedly Hessian in accent and pronunciation. German speakers can place me around Frankfurt am Main pretty quickly, the way someone could identify a Texan or Jersey Shore resident here.

These two experiences have led me to take a descriptivist view of language.

Now, This sort of thing can sound downright Continental, and therefore heretical, in some precincts. After all, the last generation of intellectuals witnessed firsthand the depredations by the krauts of Scripture (Boltmann, et al) and of art and morality by the frogs (Derrida, Foucault, etc). But I hope to dispel that notion by saying that objective meaning obviously exists. It is, in my view, a priori, or as Dr. Plantinga would say, "properly basic." And that objective reality can be known and communicated.

It's my belief that our amazing ability to take the language that we receive, both formally through school and informally by swimming through this melting pot of ours, and add to it shades and layers of meaning heretofore unknown, is a reflection of the Imago Dei within us.

After all, what determines the brilliance of a diamond is its ability to reflect light. What reflects the light of our Creator better than weaving a tapestry of words that we'll continue to enjoy and offer up for all eternity?

God's Word is so comprehensive and beautiful that He exists as a person within the Holy Trinity. As bearers of the divine image, our language also possesses the quality of dynamic personhood.

As we create and discard words and phrases through the process of interacting with people and the world, we would do well to remember the words of the apostle-

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."

And of the psalmist-

"May the words of my mouth,
And the meditations of my heart,
Be acceptable in your sight, O Lord,
My strength and my redeemer."