September Entry 1 - Does the postmodernist view that language is a barrier to understanding mean that knowledge in history is unattainable?

 

Does the postmodernist view that language is a barrier to understanding mean that knowledge in history is unattainable?

Language is a powerful tool that helps enhance communication between people. Language is however often seen as a barrier between different countries and continents. Why is this so? Postmodern historians typically assert that it is impossible to know exactly what happened in the past, in any sort of objective sense. So in their opinion, History is thus, subjective and no one’s view holds weight over another.

Well everyone speaks a different language from you and it might be hard to understand. This in turn makes it hard to share information or receive it in any manner. However it is not impossible. The scope is wide here and there are many ways to overcome this barrier. Methods and tools can be explored to find many ways to understand information through different forms of thinking. People will have their own perspectives on this topic however it is not right to bluntly state that language is a barrier because people can gain false knowledge and start things like discrimination based on false values.

There are now many things that have developed in this modern world that can help us translate and understand. A few years back, people used to use symbols to convey things in a different language. Universal symbols that everyone understood made it quite efficient and easy to pass on and receive information. There is solid proof to this. Even the periodic table in chemistry is an example!

So now that I have discussed these things I can strongly say that knowledge on history is not unattainable. There are many different ways that we can understand and interpret things. This also helps us discover more. Different languages and modes of communication can really tell us allot about the time period and the type of people.

When we talk about ethics it I feel like post modernists lack in the area as they are preventing many people from gaining knowledge through these different ways and also preventing in communication by stating language as a barrier.

Language is actually a tool that we can use to connect to the outside world and we should never take it as a barrier. Language also makes us more social and open to learning. Learning other languages can increase the capacity of your brain and help you make contact with the outside world. Through these things you can learn to read books or other secondary sources written in different languages and hence it can help in discovering more new things about the past. So I do not see language as a barrier, more like an aid.