jl0630 - 1/22/09

This past class about language hit especially close to home for me after having traveled to many foreign places and being acquainted with many language and interpretation barriers. As history repeats itself, as we talked about, barriers have resulted in war. I have two different angles I would like to relate and oppose this theory to. Before I went abroad I would go on vacations, typically to tropical places like Mexico, and have preplanned trips to explore the country, lay on the beach, and collect souvenirs on the way. Never would I especially worry about language as long as I had the names of the places I wanted to go so I could be brought there. When I thought about Mexico, I thought about the place that had exceptionally beautiful weather and was inexpensive – a pretty narrow reference; a narrow reference like the narrow fundamentals of politics and religion that we talked about. As I traveled throughout the world however, I started to gain the most satisfaction in communicating, making friends and getting to know the areas in which we were stepping foot in. I befriended many people and learning/adopting many things about the different ways of life and living. I reported back home and I will never forget my mom telling me that befriending people is the most important thing you can do wherever you go, especially in days like these where there is war and destruction happening all over. When you can start making references, things begin to take on a whole new meaning. To sum it up, without language/communication, there are no references – only beaches, souvenirs, and the fundamental conflicts between right and wrong. With language/communication, however, there are associations, similarities, and an understanding/appreciation that politics and religion have failed to reach, thus, “conflict is nothing but the moral state of difference” (110).