ABSTRACT
Is our imagination defined through verbal language alone? Or are we beyond words? What does it mean to feel speechless? How do we communicate sans mots? What does it mean to say: ‘I have no idea?’ In a letter to Marc-André Souchay dated 15 October 1842, Felix Mendelssohn wrote: ‘What the music I love expresses to me, is not thought too indefinite to put into words, but on the contrary, too definite’ (Mendelssohn 1864: 276, emphasis in original). To what extent, if at all, are words the most appropriate vehicles to convey human emotion? Do they compress communication at the expense of other communicative ‘frequencies’, so to speak? In his book Ways of Seeing, John Berger describes a ‘new language of images’ within which he argues that we can communicate our experiences with more precision (1973: 33). Berger's prevailing assumption is that ‘Seeing comes before words’ and, furthermore, that we make sense of what we see through language. I suggest that the definition of a speech act as part of legal narratives must be expanded to incorporate other forms of expression in order to expand our collective imagination of human experience. If, as Wittgenstein suggested, ‘Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination’ (Wittgenstein 2009: § 6), then we must explore the extent to which we may extend this precept to incorporating other forms of communication that we are trained to recognize. If, as Aristotle maintained, art forms such as painting and poetry represent examples of mimesis or imitation as a means to acquire knowledge (Aristotle 1996: 3), then artistic endeavour, as well as artistic appreciation thereof, may constitute a way to school our understanding of self-expression.
