The awareness of language's
failure derives from practical experiences for which new
languages become necessary.
Miscommunication is an instance of language not suitable to the
experience. Lack of communication points to limitations of the
humans involved in an activity. Miscommunication makes people
question (themselves, others) about what went wrong, why, and
what, if anything, can be done to avoid practical consequences
affecting the efficiency of their activity. Other forms of
language malfunction can affect people as individuals or as
members of a community in ways different from those peculiar to
communication. The failure of political systems, ideologies,
religion(s), markets, ethics, or family is expressed in the
breakdown of patterns of human relations. We keep alive the
language of those political systems, ideologies, religions, and
markets even after noticing their failure, not by accident or
through oversight but because all those languages are us, as we
constitute ourselves as participants in a political process,
subjects of ideological indoctrination, religious believers,
commodities in the market, family members, and ethical citizens.
The inefficiency of these experiences reflects our own
inefficiency, more difficult to overcome than poor spelling,
etymological ignorance, or phonetic deafness.
The wall behind the Wall
An appropriate example of the solidarity between language
experience and the individual constituted in language is
provided by the breakdown of the East European block, and even
more pointedly by the breakdown of the Soviet Union.
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