Humans cannot understand what they cannot put to words. Words are what societies rely upon to communicate and interpret the world. The world has seen how words strung together into phrases and phrases strung together into speeches have brought the masses to their knees with tears and rallied the angry mobs to rise up and grab their pitchforks in salute. All of this action is the result of the words that stirred their hearts. With these moving shows of words there has come a need to create and produce, to invent and experiment with language. Words are vital to a prosperous society. Yet words alone do not have any intrinsic value.
The words that are used to communicate could really be any other word or phrase. Yet people got together out of a need to relate to one another and decided that ‘tree’ meant the tall thing that had branches coming out of it that yielded fruits. However, even with this system certain emotions and elements of life are left without a concrete or tangible explanation. “…we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love?”
Words are mankind’s way of communicating with each other on a higher level other than just grunts and body language. Words are really just more defined grunts with meaning. Unless the meaning of the word is known by the person using it and the person receiving it, it is more or less useless. Words are what people and societies make them out to be.
“When I say ‘love,’ the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know?”
Words can show worlds of imagination; they can harness the true nature of love and release it on the page. Words put into eloquent prose can bring the hardest person with a heart of stone to tears. Words are dead. It is the writer and the user that bring life to them. “And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for.”
Words have expanded the world from the grunting Neanderthals of old to the mass production of words today. Language has evolved with societies to fit their ever changing need. Words adapt to new meanings and encompass new realms of thought. And as with any change there will be the innovators and the cynics. The everyday written word has now expanded to include text lingo and emoticons. “Each September Jacqueline Harding prepares a classroom presentation on the common writing mistakes she sees in her students’ work. … This September, she has added a new list: u, r, ur, b4, wuz, cuz, 2.”
The art of communication is constantly being observed as lost on the younger generations. Whether it is through the constant instant-messaging or their newfangled lingo, this generation will be the death of language, just like every other generation before it. Is it the perceived abuse of the current language or is it the change that grates at the edges of the critics?
“Ms. Brecker once handed in a midterm exam riddled with instant-messaging shorthand. ‘I had an hour to write an essay on Romeo and Juliet,’ she said, ‘I just wanted to finish before my time was up. I was writing fast and carelessly. I spelled ‘you’ ‘u.’ She got a C.”
In today’s society, communication and social interactions occur through the wonders of the written word captured by electronics. However unless a person is very eloquent in their instant-messaging or online communications their message can sometimes be misunderstood. The meanings of words change with their context and their phrasing.
“…today’s students are ‘Generation Text.’ Almost 60 percent of the online population under age 17 uses instant messaging, according to Nielson/NetRatings. In addition to cellphone text messaging, Weblogs and email, it has become a popular means of flirting, setting up dates, asking for help with homework and keeping in contact with distant friends. The abbreviations are a natural outgrowth of this rapid-fire style of communication.”
The accessibility of the printed word is lowering its value. It is as simple as supply and demand in economics. With the increase in supply, the demand will subsequently lower, therefore decreasing its value. Generations past have fought and died for the written word, and now societies everywhere are able to convey a 140 character thought for the entire world to see. Is it that words and the process of using them is now underappreciated or is it simply a new step in the evolution of the written word meant to cherish and support its prosperity?
"It's not just the woman that died," said Montag. "Last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before." He got out of bed. "It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I came along in two minutes and boom! it's all over."
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury shows the reader a world where books are burned and knowledge is far less reaching than as in today’s time. The written word contains great power, a power that has probably not even been fully tapped into. "So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless.”