Any attempt at understanding verbal communication runs up against the reality that language is not some thing. It does not exist apart from the people who speak or write it. The notion that there is, or can be, clarity in communication as long as we just consult Webster's or the OED is not just philosophically untenable; it is a violation of our everyday grasp that even at the best of times, and with those with whom we are most intimate, communication has a measure of opacity that cannot be escaped by running to a reference shelf.
If this is true in our everyday life, or in coming to some kind of legal consensus on a text or clause in a law or the Constitution, how much more can it be said of communication between people who do not speak the same language? Larry McMurtry offers up a speech given by the Cherokee Onitositah in 1777:
Let us examine the facts of your present irruption into our country. . . . What did you do? You marched into our territories with a superior force . . . your numbers far exceeded us, and we fled to the stronghold of our extensive woods. . . . Your laws extend not into our country, nor ever did. . . .
Indeed, much has been advanced on the want of what you term civilization among the Indians; and many proposals have been made to us to adopt your laws, your religion, your manners, and your customs. But, we confess that we do not yet see the propriety, or practicability, of such a reformation, and should be better pleased with beholding the good effect of these doctrines in your own practices than with hearing you talk about them. . . .
McMurtry follows directly:
That sounds pretty Augustan to me; Dr. Johnson - who wouldn't have been on Corn Tassel's side - couldn't have put it better; the question it raises is why all Native American orators, whatever their language group, are translated to sound either like Dr. Johnson, the prophet Isaiah, or, at a stretch, the Sioux wise man Black Elk, himself rather fulsomely translated by the poet John G. Neihardt and hid daughters.
As a source of the constant - and ongoing - friction between the European who arrived in the Americas desiring to own the land and the native populations who sought to hold on to what was their land (and, of course, later their stories and customs and religion and languages and even their lives), this kind of problem might be solved by the recognition at the outset that even with the best intentions and attempts, people too often talk past one another in an effort to communicate.
As an object lesson in the difficulties inherent in communication, our national lack-of-clear discourse with Indian people should be a lesson to anyone intent on making an argument on the clarity of any communicative act. Whether it's reading the Constitution, debating a fine point of law, or reading the Bible, we should always remember that words only have meaning insofar as they exist as all too human tools. While they are suited well for the task of having one person, or several people, make sense of the world in a kind of general way, closer attention reveals there is, and always will be, a gap between those who are attempting to communicate. That gap can never be closed completely; when we factor in differences of the very real historical and social situation of any language (whether it is an Indian language like Cherokee, or a dead language like koine Greek), we have the added task of "doing the best we can" while always recognizing that best will be, despite our best efforts, incomplete.
We should remember, then, that when we are communicating, the challenge of misunderstanding also offers the opportunity for greater understanding as long as we acknowledge, beforehand, the limitation of any communicative act. Words have meaning, to be sure; having a meaning, however, is far different from understanding how those meanings fit together. That is the danger, and the possibility, that lies at the heart of much of the human predicament.
