Perplexity

Recent events have made me feel that my command of language is slowly slipping away, and I feel a creeping suspicion that this really is the case. I vaguely remember Wittgenstein’s description of language as a net, and his thesis that the reason for all our philosophical quandaries and conundrums is our imperfect use of the language, or the imperfections of the language itself, as his analogised “net of language” becomes increasingly knotted and convoluted. And perhaps what may be gathered as a corollary of this theory is that our command and use of language is important in ways far more significant than how effectively we are able to communicate with others; it also determines and restricts how well we are able to describe, to comprehend and understand the world to and for ourselves. If this really is so, then what happens when one’s command of language truly begins to deteriorate, when the pieces of rope that constitute the net itself begin to fray and fall away—does this mean that one’s understanding and knowledge of the world is correspondingly diminished? When the shape and sound of familiar words become the only things well-defined about them, and the reins of long sentences slip impetuously from the grasp of my pen, the world becomes a little more inscrutable, each book a little more unfathomable, and my mood far bleaker.