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Truth In Language

Posted on 21/05/2010 by admin

What is it to be able to say that truth exists in language? Is it more than that language makes some kind of sense to us because they are structured? And that if they veer off the road of sense then they must be false? Put another way, if a sentence follows the rules of grammar and all the elements in it refer to or denote, actual things, then the sentence can be said to be correct. Even the sentence Martians Don’t Exist is a correct and true sentence with meaning, because we know there are no Martians.

If this is all it takes for language to be true, then language merely follows understanding and knowledge of the world. It describes rather than reveals. It is the paint on the canvas but not the painting. And obviously if this is true, then language needs to change because like all tools we need to modify it to improve its efficacy.

But is there a cross-over between what it is for a sentence to be true and what truth is? The only idea I ever had that there may be is that there are consequences of truth in  language. Like all truth. And those consequences are that the meaning we impart when we write and speak, has content. That no matter how often we repeat it, or to whom it is said and at what time in the eons, it will always be the truth.

In this sense lies can be ‘true lies’; we get the meaning,  structure has touched upon the immutable.

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Children’s author, novelist, editor and poet.

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