Expressing Oneself in a Foreign Language

Some of you may know that I'm currently attending a special Korean language program in Korea.  I'm studying at Kyunghee University (경희대학교) in Seoul.  It's funny, even as I'm trying to type the name of the university in English, I'm having trouble, because I only see it in my mind's eye as 경희.  Well anyways, I LOVE IT!  One of the best things has been the friends that I've made already.  I'll be honest, I could get the same classwork/teaching in Japan (on Okinawa), they occasionally have teachers come and they put on a great class!  But, the real benefit of coming here to Korea is the chance to interact with it everyday and everywhere, especially as I make friends.  If I were going to class on Okinawa, sure it'd be able to go home to my family every night, but my use of the language would be limited outside of class.  While I'm here I have to use Korean all the time!  I use it to do laundry, turn on/off the heater in my room, order coffee at the coffee shop (though they use a lot of English there), order food at every restaurant, at the grocery (that was tough, I don't deal with food that much in English, so it was much harder in Korean), etc. etc.

Really the best part though, is making Korean friends.  The very first night I was here, I had eaten dinner and was looking for a bar that the waiter had recommended.  I was lost, and as I walked I was looking for someone from which to get directions.  I saw a young(ish) looking man walking my way and we made eye contact and I guess my face said I had a question before my voice did, because he stopped, pulled out his earphones and greeted me in English.  I generally make it a habit to not try to talk to people wearing earphones so after telling him I had a question I appologised for interrupting him.  I told him what I was looking for, and in true Korean style, he said that he would go with me looking for it.  Well, quite easily, we found the bar and he came in with me, sat down and we talked for hours, even though he had been at work since early that morning.  Turns out, he's a writer for a Korean newspaper the "Segye Daily [News]" ("세계일보").  We chatted for a long time, exchange contact information and went our merry ways, though we've gotten together again since at a beautiful little cafe that has more LPs than one could ever hope to finish, at which he introduced me to a friend from high school (or middle school I don't remember).  Since that first chance meeting I've made many other friends, some of which replied (within minutes) to an ad I posted on Craigslist (odd, I know I've never used Craigslist before).

Which brings me to the point of this whole entry:

I was chatting with my newest language exchange partner (언어교환친구) and we started talking about communication.  Let me tell you, this was really difficult with my limited vocabulary!  Try communicating something like this:

Chart Credit: http://www.brighthubpm.com/

In a different language!  Talk about meta!  Talking about communicating whilst communicating and dealing with the worst types of interference.  It's not pictured on this particular diagram, but anyone who's studied communication knows that it's never this simple.  There's so much interference between each step.  The "sender" has interference in translating thoughts into words, or in my case into words in different languages.  Then there's interference in the channel/media, maybe the "receiver" doesn't hear the whole message, maybe the receiver is seeing one visual/non-verbal message but receiving a different message, etc. etc.  Well, I love this kind of thing and the only thing that I don't like about spending time here is the constant reminder/humbling I receive showing me just how much I don't know when it comes to expressing myself in Korean.

Sunset from Seoul Tower

Vagueness

I've been thinking about this for a while and I'd like to address it here.

As a bit of background, I've often mentioned the History of Philosophy podcast.  Unfortunately, I don't get the chance to take notes, so I'll be honest, I don't remember many of the names of the philosophers mentioned in the podcast.  The other day however, one of the Hellenistic philosophers had a thought lesson that goes something like this.

Philosopher: Here is one grain of sand.  Is it a "heap of sand"?
Respondent: No of course not.
P: Here is two grains, it is a heap?
R: No.
P: Here are three, it is a heap?
R: No.
.... This continues, then eventually the respondent will answer, "Yes."
P: Let me take away one grain of sand, is it still a "heap"?
R: Well...
P: Certainly you don't mean to tell me that ONE grain of sand constitutes a "heap of sand" because earlier you said it wasn't.

This speaks to many different issues, one of which was that the sage (wise man) will withhold judgement, and the topic I have been thinking about, vagueness.

This basically falls into the philosophy of language subset of philosophy but it has serious ramifications for all levels of philosophy.  Think about it, the term "human" as clear as it seems, has at least some vagueness to it.  From Dictionary.com; the Science Dictionary, "A member of the species Homo sapiens;  a human being."  A member of any of the extinct species of the genus Homo,  such as Homo erectus or Homo habilis,  that are considered ancestral or closely related to modern humans.  Assuming darwinian or neo-darwinian evolution, when does that start?  How many human characteristics does something need to have to be human?  How can you define something so vague?  No matter how detailed a dictionary may be, there's always going to be some level of vagueness.

Obviously I've picked one of the hardest definitions to start out with, but this relates to epistemology as well.  If there's skepticism in everything including definitional issues, how can we communicate at all?  How are you reading this blog?  What if you don't even define blog the same way as I do?  Granted my definition is the correct one!  Obviously we're standing on some amount of common ground, but that brings up what type(s) of common ground we need to communicate.  There's vagueness within my talk about vagueness.  Definitions, what's a definition?  We need a definition of definition before we can talk about vagueness because we need that common ground.  Are definitions subject to the will of the people?  Dictionaries change and disagree, which one do we trust?  Even if we agree on which dictionary we should use, what about when dictionaries change?  Do we both agree with the new definition?  What about what made the definition change, do we agree on the reason why the dictionary decided to change the definition?

Now that we've not decided on that bit of common ground, now we need to decide how much common ground we need to have before we can communicate.  So we don't completely completely agree on the exact word-for-word definition of each and every word used in this discussion, does that mean we can't communicate?  Apparently not, because I'm assuming you can read and understand what I'm writing here.  So now, even if we have a level of acceptable vagueness in definitions and definition change, what about agreeing on how much difference is acceptable?  There's vagueness in the amount of vagueness acceptable for communication.

I don't have any answers for you here, only questions.  Just casting doubt on everything we say and the very basics of communication.