Loquacious (a "wordy" series): The Sensuous Life of Language

I want to be a word. I would be abstract

with an inscrutable ending.
Anna Moschovakis, "Untitled"

Loquacious: full of excessive talk : wordy (www.m-w.com)

Loquacious is a "wordy" series that revels in language. I'm kicking it off with a (slightly modified) excerpt from my essay "The Secret Life of Language" (which began life as a lecture). As the series progresses, I'll share more of my thoughts on all things wondeful and wordy (worderful?), plus some fantastic guest posts from other word lovers (a.k.a. "wordies," which are the literary compatriots of "foodies").

The Sensuous Life of Language

By Jennifer McGuiggan

I once read the word ambergris, which is a noun from the French for "amber grey." It refers to the mysterious substance that is prized as a fixative in perfume and believed to originate in the intestines of sperm whales. It's a fascinating noun, but I didn’t think much about whales or perfume when I read it. Instead, my mind played hopscotch with the letters in ambergris, and I landed on aubergine, also a French word, but one I connect to England, as it's the British term for eggplant. I don't really like eggplant. Its texture is too spongy for my taste; its purply-black skin too rich a jewel tone for my preferred color palette. I like the word eggplant a bit more than I like the fruit. The word makes a dull, but satisfying, thud upon my tongue ― egg-plant ― and comes rolling out like a―well, like an egg. But aubergine is sexy, something voluptuous and spicy, like a nice glass of Shiraz. Aubergine is a word I love more than the thing itself. I savor the way it sounds, for the way my mouth moves when I say it, for the way the word itself tastes.

I learned the word aubergine when I lived in England, where I also learned alternate words for other objects in the produce aisle, such as courgette for zucchini and swede ― which the dictionary now tells me is British for rutabaga (itself a fun word) ― but which I could have sworn referred to some sort of melon. And there we are again. Melon: something I love as much for its wordness as its thingness. To me, the mellifluous sounds of melon taste just as good, if not better, than an actual slice of slippery, cool cantaloupe or honeydew.

For language lovers, the taste, sound, and feel of words is at least as important as their meanings. We writers have a sensuous relationship with language. People often say that the poets know this best, but I think that slights us prose writers. I may be after a good story when I read or write prose, but I'm also after sentences that unfurl in my mouth and mind like the edible, golden bloom of the zucchini ― or, courgette ― flower.

One of my favorite unfurling sentences comes from the novel Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen, a book about a young nun who may or may not be experiencing mystical trances that mark her body with stigmata. Here's the sentence: "Each prayer grayly feathering from her mouth" (139). If we're going to get technical about things, it's not a true sentence because a gerund ("feathering") occupies the space where a verb would otherwise sit. But it's a beautiful, sensuous sentence in which the sounds perfectly match the imagery: "Each prayer grayly feathering from her mouth."

We tend to think of language as an intellectual faculty, but we first enter into language bodily, not mentally. As young children, we don't consciously study syntax or grammar, or memorize dictionary pages to learn words. Instead, we learn to speak by listening, by making sounds, by imitating what we see and hear others doing.

Here's another passage that's too delicious to pass up. It's from Eudora Welty in One Writer's Beginnings. She's describing her childhood visits to her grandparents' farm:

Barefooted on the slick brick walk I rushed to where I could breathe in the cool breath from the interior of the springhouse. On a cold, bubbling spring, covered dishes and crocks and pitchers of butter and milk and so on floated in a circle in the mild whirlpool, like horses on a merry-go-round in the water that smelled of the mint that grew close by. (65) 

This passage just tastes good to me, and makes me feel like I'm with Welty in that springhouse, smelling the mint. I enter the words on the page not just mentally, but bodily. I wonder what Welty's grandparents kept on those covered dishes and crocks. Probably not aubergines or courgettes, but a girl can dream.

Comments

[Helen (Dixon Hill Girl)]

Wonderful idea for a series!