I think of weird shit when I've got insomnia...
Like power and general strangeness of words, names, and languages. Our existence in the world is literally made up of weird sounds we make and interpret to have meaning. Beyond that, we develop whole social constructs around the discourses created by those weird sounds. Labels, names, nouns. A single word can evoke entire universes of meaning. A single word could change a life. Could end a life. Could start a war. We put so much power into those weird sounds. So much meaning. And how do we know those meanings? We are taught them by the rest of society, which was taught to them by their predecessors, on and on and on. And those meanings are altered by the introduction of new weird sounds with their own meanings and interpretations. And we as humans, live, fight, love, and die to enforce our ideas about those weird sounds...even more strange is the fact that depending on where we live, those weird sounds might be different but mean the same thing as another set of sounds.
What is a word but the socially accepted construct to express an idea. This entire post is understood because at some point, someone decided that shapes and lines drawn together in a pattern represented a sound which represented an idea. Then it was simple taught and passed on from one person to another. From one generation to the next. On and on for hundreds of years.
We know 'apple' because our parents told us the sound associated with the red tree fruit that tastes good. And they knew it because their parents knew it. Children in France learned that 'pomme' was the red tree fruit. It's the same idea with a different sound.
I've never specifically studied linguistics. I would like to. I'm sure linguists have far more to say on this subject and I would like to hear more about it. These thought are simply those of a historian who has studied discourse and the importance of language in historical societies.
