Language(s) as Map(s)

Artwork by Alice Webb Art Links to an external site.

The Importance of Constructing Proper 'Maps'

Humans can build on the knowledge of prior generations. Alfred Korzybski referred to this capability as time-binding. Language serves as the principle tool that facilitates time-binding. Language also serves as a guiding influence in shaping our world view and life experiences.

We can apply the map-territory analogy to evaluate our language habits and behaviors. As a map represents a territory, so our language symbolizes our thoughts, emotions, ideas, opinions, and experiences. To the degree that the maps we construct accurately portray the structural relationships of the territory, they serve us well.

If, however, the maps we construct inaccurately depict the relationships among the territory of our experiences, they can result in trouble. To best serve our own time-binding interests, our verbal 'maps' ought to be congruent and consistent with the realities of our non-verbal 'territories'.

On the previous page, we learned that current brain scientists agree that what we have naively believed were direct experiences of ‘reality’ we are instead experiences that we construct within each of our own brains, minds, and nervous systems.

How does this knowledge affect our language habits and behaviors?

We ought to easily recognize, then, that ancient notions such as objective or absolute reality do not accurately reflect the limitations of our nervous systems as they interact with the outside world. Therefore language structures, patterns, or terms that rely on this false-to-fact notion that what I experience (or say) "is" the same as what exists "out there" in the world misrepresent, mislead, and misinform. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group ... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. — Edward Sapir (Carroll, 1956, p. 134)

Language Misbehaviors

No language is perfect. Every language, being man-made and not inherent or inerrant, has structural flaws and cannot properly reflect the structure of the world we uniquely sense and experience. If we accept the view that language(s) shape, influence, affect, etc., how a given culture constructs the 'realities' of that culture's experiences, behavioral norms, world view, etc. (Ramachandran, Sapir, and others), then it behooves us as individuals and societies to acknowledge these flaws and revise our language habits and behaviors accordingly.

In addition to these structural flaws, individuals are prone to commit errors that result from lack of awareness of the abstracting/ evaluating process, conventional language habits and usages, or careless inattention.

Some of the symptoms of language misbehaviors include:

We uncritically accept our perceptions of the world 'out there' as complete, accurate, and "the way it is."
We fail to consider the perceptions and perspectives of others who see "the way it is" differently than we do.
We confuse the word itself with what the word stands for.
We act as if words have 'meanings' on their own, without respect to individuals and context.
We mistake or confuse facts with inferences, assumptions, beliefs, etc.
We simplistically consider issues in terms of either-or, black or white, right or wrong, good or bad; we do not account for "shades of gray."
We tend to look for and recognize similarities more than differences, which results in mistaken generalizations, stereotypes, biases, etc.
We forget or overlook the fact that every person and every thing changes over time.
We use language to verbally 'separate' what cannot be separated in the real world (ex. mind from body, thoughts from feelings, style from content, form from function, "pure" reason or emotion, etc.).

Developing New Language Behaviors and Attitudes

Our language habits can affect our physiological behavior; we can allow what we see, hear, say, etc., to affect our blood pressure, pulse, rate of breathing, etc. As we become more aware of our verbal and non-verbal behaviors, we can practice techniques to achieve greater degrees of relaxation, less stress, greater sense of our environment, etc.

When we respond automatically, without exercising control over our response, we allow the stimulus to condition or determine our response. In other words, we behave more like Pavlov's dog than an aware human being when we let someone or something "push our emotional hot buttons."

Korzybski referred to two aspects of these behavioral implications of our internal language habits. He continually stressed the importance of what he called "cortico-thalamic" integration (Korzybski, 1994, p. xxvi). By this he meant that there needed to be a balanced integration of the new brain (the cortex) and the old or reptilian brain (which in the terminology of the time he referred to generally as the thalamus - what we now understand to be the amygdala). In other words, he described how, with proper awareness, one could use the capabilities of the cortex to temper, dampen, or even override the emotional or reactive responses of the thalamus/amygdala.

He emphasized that aware humans have the ability to respond conditionally to both non-verbal and symbolic stimuli. In other words, we have some degree of control over our response to a specific stimulus.

This is the gist of what current neuroscientists and psychologists now refer to with new terms, as evidenced in this excerpt of four clips from the PBS series "This Emotional Life" with Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert Links to an external site. (Sweet & Gilbert, 2010).

If you have trouble viewing YouTube videos, try this as an alternative:

TEL-4excerpts.mp4 Download TEL-4excerpts.mp4 Play media comment.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimation of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. — Marcus Aurelius

We cannot command the wind, but we can adjust our sails. — Anonymous

Our ability to achieve "maximum humanness" and evolve to our human potential is a function of how accurately our language behaviors (what we do) reflect and are consistent with what we know. Therefore can evaluate our language behaviors according to criteria such as how well we:

maintain an ongoing attitude of "to-me-ness;"
hold our opinions, judgments, beliefs, and assumptions with a degree of tentativeness and willingness to change if new information or experiences warrant;
live comfortably with uncertainty;
exercise a healthy degree of skepticism and inquisitiveness;
strive for more description and less opinion, as approriate to the occasion;
strive for more unique and personal observations in our pronouncements, and fewer cliches, stock phrases, aphorisms, and conventional wisdoms;
look for differences among similarities, as well as recognize similarities among differences, seeing both the forest and the trees, depending on the circumstances; and
maintain a deserved sense of humility and minimize know-it-all attitudes.

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