Metaphor Tok
Alamine Jamai TOK-Metaphors 7/01/11
11th grade
1. To what extent does language generalize individual experience, classifying it within the experience of a linguistic group?
Did it ever happen to you to be chilling with all your friends, suddenly an anecdote comes to mind; you finding it related to the subject in hand and quite amusing start sharing your anecdote; by the end of your anecdote you find yourself the only one amused by it. What then? You tell your friends you should have been there to understand. When an individual experience is recounted it has never the same effect as if one was there. This is the beauty of life experience, if everything can be told through language everyone would be stuck at home reading what life is all about behind a book or a computer. Language has been and still is a great tool of communication and of exchanging ideas but it has always its limitations like everything that is created by man. Another example would be going to the movies, or going to a basketball game. Imagine if the mean of language was enough to give the same sensation as if it was the individual experience that happened to the one that was really there; why would a person waste his money to go to the same movie when his friend can use the tool of language to share the experience. Language is a fine way of really generalizing individual experience and if one wants a better tool, be there and use your five senses.
2. What is lost in translation from one language to another? Why?
Language can be seen as an Algorithm. If it is seen this way translation can be the conversion from one to another. Looking at it mathematically how hard can it be? Very hard I might say. There are thousands of languages and many more that are already dead. To add upon this, languages do
11th grade
1. To what extent does language generalize individual experience, classifying it within the experience of a linguistic group?
Did it ever happen to you to be chilling with all your friends, suddenly an anecdote comes to mind; you finding it related to the subject in hand and quite amusing start sharing your anecdote; by the end of your anecdote you find yourself the only one amused by it. What then? You tell your friends you should have been there to understand. When an individual experience is recounted it has never the same effect as if one was there. This is the beauty of life experience, if everything can be told through language everyone would be stuck at home reading what life is all about behind a book or a computer. Language has been and still is a great tool of communication and of exchanging ideas but it has always its limitations like everything that is created by man. Another example would be going to the movies, or going to a basketball game. Imagine if the mean of language was enough to give the same sensation as if it was the individual experience that happened to the one that was really there; why would a person waste his money to go to the same movie when his friend can use the tool of language to share the experience. Language is a fine way of really generalizing individual experience and if one wants a better tool, be there and use your five senses.
2. What is lost in translation from one language to another? Why?
Language can be seen as an Algorithm. If it is seen this way translation can be the conversion from one to another. Looking at it mathematically how hard can it be? Very hard I might say. There are thousands of languages and many more that are already dead. To add upon this, languages do