The Representation of Ideas

The Representation of Ideas

"For an idea to exist we must have words to express it" (Wilcox). This statement has been disputed amongst my 10th grade English class; I personally believe said statement to be false. Although, in court lawyers only need to find one counter argument to prove something wrong, I have thought up of numerous arguments to counter this statement.

Have you ever heard the axiom "a picture's worth a thousand words"? I find that you can grasp the concept of most pictures without a caption of any sort. The first picture that comes to my mind is the one of a group of dogs playing cards. You can look at this picture and know what's happening without being told. Another way to put this is observation versus inference. This is something that most people learn in science class at some point in time. After making observations of something you make an inference based upon what you gather using your five senses. These two concepts show that you can tell what is happening without having to read it through words.

Pictures may be one thing, but to see them in motion, or better yet, to see things in real life would make an idea clearer and easier to understand. When looking at an item, such as a chair, you cannot argue whether it exists or not. Just because you don't have words to describe it does not diminish its existence. A chair will still exist even if you can't describe it.

The language barrier sets everything apart. Sign language is a matter of using actions to represent what you are trying to say. Certain actions can make people think of specific things. Having thoughts represented in words doesn't mean you can't think without them. If you were to travel to a country with a different language and not know that language you could make motions with your hands to represent words such as rain, hit, run, and other simple words.

"You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year" (Orwell 46). This quote shows that even with the destruction of words the characters can still understand each other and have a conversation. In all, there is no way to prevent "thoughtcrime" in Orwell's book because there are so many different ways to represent an idea.