The power of language

The Power of Language Although Susanne Langer did a study on humans and animals to show signs vs. symbols in understanding language, Helen Keller and Malcolm X took different paths on discovering the power of language. Langer brings up how there is a difference between symbols and signs, which most people consider them one in the same. For Keller she was deaf and blind from the age of 19 months, where she had difficulty learning how to communicate and understand language. In Malcolm X’s case, he was a street hustler who didn’t get proper education and was frustrated when he couldn’t get his point across through his letters he wrote. In “Language and thought” it was said, “A sign is anything that announces the existence or the imminence of some event, the presence of a thing or a person, or a change in the state of affairs” (Langer, Pg. 28). Where both humans and animals use signs all the time. For both of us sounds, smells, and motions could be signs of food, danger, the presence of others around us, or of a storm approaching. For animals they use signs for defense, to call out for others, signs of feelings or intentions to be reckoned with or just to let them in. Humans use signs way more than animals in their everyday life. We answer calls, read other peoples expressions, watch the sky or animals for coming storms, cross streets when there’s a walk man, or wait when it says, stop at red lights and go at green. “In every case a sign is closely bound up with something to be noted or expected in experience” (Langer, Pg. 28). “A symbol differs from a sign in that it does not announce the presence of the object, the being, condition, or whatnot, which is its meaning, but merely brings this thing to mind.” (Langer, Pg. 28). The difference between sign and symbol is that a sign generates us “to think or act in the face of the thing signified”, and a symbol is people’s concept of the thing symbolized. There are many things that are considered symbols, including