JENNER J PRINCE*
When we see how little we can express, it is a wonder that any man ever takes up a pen a second time.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
As a teacher in a fully residential school, I’ve had countless opportunities to engage with both teachers and students, whether on the playground or in the classroom. These interactions have ranged from light-hearted banter to profound, meaningful discussions. Yet, regardless of the nature of these conversations—or their stakes—I’ve often found myself unable to articulate more than half of what was swirling in my mind or heart. The vivid, colourful ideas in my head seemed to fade into dull shades of grey the moment they left my mouth. Initially, I thought this was due to my poor or even non-existent communication skills. ‘If only I had the right words to express my ideas,’ I often thought. But perhaps there was more to it.
My journey to uncovering the deeper truth began when I stumbled upon a quote attributed to J Krishnamurti: ‘… So you are not listening to a speaker but rather listening to yourself.’ This line broke the inertia and compelled me to explore Krishnamurti’s insights on language and communication further. One article, titled ‘Can I strip myself of the network of language?’, stood out and did not disappoint. One particularly profound statement in the article resonated deeply with me:
The very act of labelling, of giving a name to something, is a limitation, a barrier to understanding it fully … the slavery to language. But if we know how to use language—the exact meaning of words, the content, and the significance of the depth of the word—then we are using language unemotionally, unsentimentally.
Two ideas from this had a strong impact: first, the notion of the slavery to language, and second, the phrase using language unemotionally, unsentimentally. With these revelations, my questions began to quieten down.
I continued my exploration, this time through the lens of evolutionary biology. As someone who doesn’t believe in coincidences, I was surprised to stumble upon something eerily similar to the issue I was grappling with—only this time, framed within the clutches of science. Here is the gist of what I discovered: the primary function of language is communication. But why and when did the need for communication evolve? This question buzzed in my mind, and as soon as it took form, the answer effortlessly presented itself. I was reminded of the well-known Cognitive Trade-off Hypothesis. This fascinating theory, proposed by primatologist Tetsuro Matsuzawa, suggests that at a particular point in our cognitive evolution, humans sacrificed short-term working memory for the ability to weave sound waves into structured packages called words. Using these words as building blocks— paired with commonly agreed-upon rules—we constructed an abstract world called language. Whether this tradeoff was worth it or not is a matter of opinion. After watching a chimpanzee ace tests designed to measure short-term memory—on a scale that seems almost impossible for humans—I couldn’t help but think—if given the choice, I’d shamelessly choose eidetic memory (also known as ‘photographic memory’) over the ability to chatter. But that’s beside the point.
The Cognitive Trade-off Hypothesis brilliantly explains ‘how’ language evolved. The ‘why’ is fairly straightforward. When our chimp-like ancestors descended from the safety of the trees and began traversing the land, cooperation became essential for survival in a dangerous terrestrial world. Without claws, fangs, venom, or any natural defence mechanisms, we were forced to rely on symbols and sounds to survive and to procreate. This need to collaborate for survival and procreation literally shaped us into what we are today. Once again, I saw these ideas mirrored in a sentence from the J Krishnamurti article… ‘So words, language drive us, shape us, shape our thinking, our behaviour, our action’.
But, like everything else, language isn’t perfect. While it helped us survive the savannahs, it comes with a significant weakness: inefficiency. Think about how much information can actually be conveyed over time. A simple phrase like, ‘I’m heading out,’ commonly used when leaving one’s residence, sparks a cascade of questions—Where? For what? With whom? When will you return? Answering all of these turns a straightforward ‘I’m heading out’ into a mini oration, which is painfully impractical. This inefficiency is why professions where quick and precise communication is a matter of life and death develop their own unique jargon. Consider the specialized lingo used by surgeons or soldiers—it’s a system designed to communicate vast amounts of information rapidly and with minimal loss of detail. Yet, even this solution has a caveat: both the speaker and listener require specialized training to understand each other clearly. Shared knowledge and context become essential. I’ve personally felt this frustration during a basketball game. In such a fast-paced sport, quick and clear communication among teammates is crucial to securing an advantage. With our ‘normal’ speech patterns, language becomes a limiting factor. On the court, we’re compelled to adopt a specialized lingo to play effectively.
There’s another layer to this story. Spoken language has a hidden weakness known as the ‘McGurk Effect’. This phenomenon occurs when the brain sandwiches visual and auditory cues. Since auditory cues—words—can often be lost amidst environmental noise, the brain stitches these sounds to corresponding visual cues, polishing out potential errors. For example, if you are hearing the sound ‘ba’ while watching someone seemingly mouth the sound ‘va,’ your brain may interpret it as a third sound ‘da’ instead of ‘ba.’ Closing your eyes eliminates the visual influence, allowing you to recognize the sound as ‘ba.’ But open your eyes again, focus on the lip movement, and the same sound mysteriously morphs back into ‘da.’ It’s a fascinating and eerie quirk of perception.
If language is so incredibly inefficient, how has it stuck around? The short answer is simple: we had a LOT of time to talk. One theory suggests that before humans discovered fire, we spent endless hours, incessantly chewing on tubers and other tough foods to make them digestible. Our mouths were occupied. But when we learned to cook with fire, those fibrous foods became easier to consume—and suddenly, our mouths had a considerable amount of free time. We filled that time with speech. In short, there was no pressing need for language to be efficient. We had more than enough time to inefficiently convey our messages, no matter how roundabout.
Eventually, as we revelled in this newfound abundance of time to talk, we began to weaponize language. Deception and dishonesty are not unique to humans; they are observed in non-human animals, too. But language gave us the ability to craft elaborate, intricate webs of deception. While lying could grant short-term advantages, it carried long-term social consequences. According to Signaling Theory, ‘talking’ is a ‘cheap signal’ because anyone can do it—it requires far less effort than taking action. This disparity caused the value of actions to rise and the value of words to diminish. An invisible barrier began to form between ‘speakers’ and ‘listeners’. Listeners, understandably, were reluctant to expend energy unpacking words, as a ‘cheap signal’ lacked credibility.
This brings me to the crux of the matter: perhaps the reason my vivid, colourful ideas turn grey as they leave my mouth is that this is precisely how it’s meant to be. We’ve paid a heavy price in evolving our human language, and from one perspective it doesn’t seem like the wisest investment.
Yet, for all its flaws, language remains the best tool we have to package the intricacies of our inner worlds and deliver them to others. It’s an imperfect bridge, but one we cross daily, hoping the other side has the right context to unpack and make sense of our thoughts.
Then knowing the meaning of words unemotionally, without any reaction to the word, then we can enquire into this whole problem of our way of living, why we live this way, why every day of our life is conflict, violent, selfish, narrow, limited, anxious, fearful, uncertain, a muddle in which we live.
—Krishnamurti