Words are more powerful and treacherous than we think. (J-P Sartre) Language plays such an important role in our daily lives. Communications, literary works of art are all great examples of language and its uses. However, we often forget to take into account how language also helps us to change and alter thoughts and ideas, and to formulate thoughts and explain them using words, which is a form of language. Language can also be ambiguous at times. Some of the ways that we alter ideas of other people is via the use of persuasive and manipulative words, and by the use of grammar or even the vocabulary that we choose to use, which may manipulate others into the direction we wish for them to go to. For example, in World War Two, the use of propaganda and influential posters by governments were solely for the purpose of influencing the people to become more patriotic and to encourage men to help fight for their country. One example of this is the popular wartime poster used by the United States of America, which depicted a man, named Uncle Sam, who was dressed in the colors of the American flag, pointing a finger outwards, with the caption ‘I want you for the U.S. army.’ The initials of Uncle Sam spell U.S., which stand for the United States, and the words of a common man saying that he wanted men for the U.S. army to fight for the country was used by the government to appeal to the patriotism of young men all over the country and to encourage them to sign up for the army. This clearly shows us how language is so important in helping to build and shape history.
However, language also has limitations to recording history. As language differs from different societies and cultures, recording and noting down important events in history can have limitations due to the possibility of it being lost in translation. Different words in different languages often cannot be translated perfectly and thus certain meanings of words by a particular historian in a particular culture may be lost or changed when translated into a different language. Thus, this affects the accuracy in portraying history. For example, during the Russian revolution of 1917, many terms such as revolutsia and demokratsia were foreign imported words and although they were used extensively in propaganda, they were not always understood perfectly by the less educated Russians. Thus, they changed the meanings of these words and the term and meaning of democracy changed slightly when used by the uneducated. Many historical records and accounts are found in different parts of the world and historians often have to directly translate words for let us say, a Japanese historian’s account of how World War two started and then translate it to English. However, there are always issues in translation that can affect our interpretation of history and make it unclear.
A chain of reasoning is no stronger than its weakest link. (Anon) Reason and how it is used in history can also have its limitations as well. People often believe that reasoning is how we obtain the whole truth and also to make rational decisions, which together with language is a key part of Ways of Knowing. There are so many different ways of reasoning that sometimes, what we do not realize is how we may not reason accurately or rationally. This can lead to informal reasoning and fallacies. For example, in relation to history, the way Chinese textbooks and Japanese textbooks reason the Nanking massacre is still widely different. In Chinese textbooks, the finger of blame is pointed at the Japanese for committing heinous acts of murdering many innocents and raping women and that the death toll reached 300,000 people. However, in Japanese textbooks, there is still a denial of the true extent of the massacre and Japanese historians and scholars have estimated the true death toll to be much lower. Thus, we can see how history can differ simply by the reasoning, flawed or not, of different men and women. This is also where we can bring in the points of biasness, rational thinking and the limits of reason. Everyone is bias to a point, and this biasness can affect our thinking and method of reasoning and how we use that to come to a conclusion. This brings us to a key point as to how we understand history. Ad Ignorantium, which is a fallacy in informal logic, asserts that something is true because it cannot be proved wrong. It mainly applies to reasoning in history, as we cannot go back in time to find out the absolute truth of an event, thus it has to be generally accepted. Also, another use of reasoning in history is the use of language via reasoning to appeal to a person. Similar to the example of the Chinese and Japanese as explained above, it can be viewed that since it is impossible to tell who is truly historically correct, we can say that both countries may be appealing to their countrymen and are also trying to support their own country.
In writing and understanding history, two important Ways of Knowing are language and reason. Although both language and reason have limitations can be flawed to a certain extent, both are still important concepts that are used in creating history. For example, we still require language to note down and understand historical records, and we need reasoning to fully comprehend history and to make rational decisions that may influence or make history. However, it is still impossible to be rid of our biasness which can lead to irrational thinking which can affect people who are making history as we speak. Thus, we can agree that although both language and reason have their specific limitations, we can see that both play important roles in history.
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