Section 3: (re)Making Language

Introduction

Seth Graves

What can we learn from the monster who taught himself to read?

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s classic gothic novel from 1818—told and retold in popular culture—and its nameless monster (Frankenstein is the doctor) presents us with a glimpse of humanity defined by a yearning for words: the words a lonely creature learns in hopes of understanding himself and others.

Gothic fiction first became a popular genre in England during the late 1700s, in the later period of the Enlightenment Era. During the Enlightenment, a Western influx of interest in the sciences and the individual led scientists to revise attitudes towards the brain’s relationship to the mind, and the interrelationship between physical bodies and human emotions.

Meanwhile, reading and writing literacy rates expanded, the arts thrived in public forums, and ideas circulated more quickly than ever. It’s no coincidence that this was a period of revolution. Revolutions in France, Haiti, and what would become the United States were all principally founded upon contemporary Enlightenment ideas about the freedom of the mind.

But a freed mind can also be frightened. The era’s encounters with these themes of individuality and emotions resulted in new explorations of horror, too. The gothic novel provided an outlet for exploring horrors and corruptions of the mind, the fears that lie within our own psychologies and dreams. Humankind's new island of the mind was as much scary as it was riveting.

Dr. Frankenstein’s unnamed monster first acquires knowledge by overhearing the instructions of a human he hides near. As he overhears a history of humanity’s mark on the world, he becomes enraged by the troubled history of our species. For the first time, he learns of war. Could it be true that one human could take it upon themself to take the life of another?

Here’s the monster as he reflects upon what he’s learned:

These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing.

In this moment, the monster begins to consider his own place in the world:

And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant; but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they, and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?

For the first time, and through language, Dr. Frankenstein’s creation begins to consider himself. And, for the first time, he attributes to himself the title monster. The monster realizes in this moment how truly lonely he feels, how desirous he is for someone to talk to—how much communication helps us bear in some way the weight of the world.

What does it mean to pursue knowledge, when knowledge itself could deepen our pain? Knowledge broadens our receptivity to emotion, but with the risk that it opens us up to all emotion—joy and sorrow. This is one of many timeless quandaries of knowledge, language, and feeling—that not all truths are easy to hear. In fact, they may require action.

In this class, we’ll explore our evolving relationships to language, including how we use and acquire languages in social and global contexts—and the importance of reflecting upon our own learning and language acquisition processes to understand ourselves and others. Language sits at the center of our ability to acquire new knowledge—as it forms the symbolic bridge by which we connect to and identify with things, people, and ideas. Like Frankenstein’s monster, acquiring language opens us up to new possibilities for expression—and exposes new layers of meaning and feeling in our lives.

This section begins with an overview of key concepts related to literacy and language (Graves, “Language, Discourse, and Literacy”), then considers language and literacy from multiple perspectives. Baruch writing instructor Kim Liao discusses her own experience of discovering and developing literacy narratives, and breaks down the essay genre into three common approaches. Kamal Belmihoub and Lucas Corcoran’s chapter, “Translingualism: Approaching Language from a Global Perspective,” uses a recent terminology, “translingualism,” to ask us to consider how different “named” languages (such as Spanish or English) and dialects (such as African-American Vernacular English, or AAVE, or Global English, GE) work and combine their way into language-users’ everyday lives. The essay asks big questions: What does it mean to know and use language, and how is our use of language connected to our ethnic, social, and political identities? Brooke Schreiber, in “The Linguistic Landscape of New York,” takes this concept into the streets of New York City, where languages and cultures share spaces—and mix, or collide, to form new local cultures.

The section concludes with two model literacy narrative essays, each written by a Baruch first-year student in ENG 2100. In “No Words,” B. Manson articulates the feeling of not having words to describe complex feelings, and Lucia Ku, in “Caught Between Worlds,” reconciles a sense of conflict as an Asian American, coming to believe it as less “stuck between two different worlds” and more “uniquely distinctive experience in and of itself.”