First Day of Class

On the first day of class, while I enjoyed meeting everyone, one thing that continually came up during our class discussion, which confused me, is on how "language limited us" as well as it enabled us to communicate with others. Now I certainly do now want to criticize any individual for the statement, because there were certainly enough people that either said it or agreed with it. However, I would merely like to touch on the fact that language is not what limits an individual's ability to communicate with other humans. Language is a tool (according to Thomas in The Lives of a Cell we use it to build metaphorical nests). What limits our usage of a tool is not the tool but our ability to wield that tool effectively. An artist who used a chisel to create a sculpture would not blame the chisel if the final sculpture did not represent the vision imagined by the artist in his or her mind. The artist would blame his ability to use that chisel and would then attempt to wield it more effectively to create his or her vision. We should not blame language for our inability to communicate effectively, but only ourselves. If we did, I bet we would attempt to better our usage of language, which would allow us to become more efficient at communicating in a hurry.