The reality of language

Ireland's position as a site of divided identity, as Jackson suggests, lies partly in "the failure of the British to define Ireland either in fully metropolitan or colonial terms" (150). Definitions, and language as the key means of definition, are thus invariably tied to the shaping of identity and one's reality.

This is something that struck me very much about Joyce (and perhaps it is true of modernism in general as well): words are as much political as they are aesthetic. Like Orwell, Joyce seems to espouse a form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the language you use defines your reality, which in turn defines and restricts your language. Stephen's formative years are matched and reflected by the literal formation of language and its semantic possibilities. As a boy, meanings are multiple and malleable, reflecting the tabula rasa state of his mind: "What did that mean, to kiss?" (11-12); "God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for God and that was God's name too" (13). Meanings, however, become restricted by social conventions, as shown by the coding in colours and language that Stephen learns. The lexical item "green rose" must be rejected because "you could not have a green rose" (9). Green (and maroon) become associated with the political reality of Ireland - green for Parnell, maroon for Davitt. In this way the rejection of the "green rose" becomes more subversively diabolical: you can have red or white roses, York and Lancaster, but to map Irish green to a British symbol is denied by linguistic and "realistic" (insofar as the real is shaped by language and society) conventions.

The effect of language on the state of of being colonised is thus highly complex: if a person is brought up in the capacity of a colonised man, how does one separate what this reality imposes on him as opposed to the reality that is his and that he can shape? How does Ireland (or India, or other colonies) define its reality when it is caught in a linguistic and real-world "halfway house" (to quote Jackson)? Language is slippery; so is reality and identity. Joyce emphasises this with his use of language, which slips and slides, fractures and builds, to create a sense of the "real": Stephen's burgeoning consciousness, matched and mapped by the reader's own consciousness in the reading experience. And yet, in line with Joyce's own identity as Irish (reflected and shaped by this characteristic of his language), shadowing it all is a constant questioning of the "real" that he builds and its relation with the "master language" of English: "How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit...my soul frets in the shadow of his language." (167)