JCNT - May 2025 Release - Full Release - Flipbook - Page 21
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names of the colors are sometimes cages, containing what doesn9t belong there &
We need the words, but use them best knowing they are containers forever
spilling over and breaking open. Something is always beyond" (p. 8). I think of my
client who once said, "Suddenly the whole night is about this feeling& the idea of
'let me just chase it' becomes part of what the story is about." As with this client's
experience, our incomplete, figurative descriptions are ongoing and alive.
There are times when words are insufficient, and others when we need more
vocabulary. I'm indebted to somatic practices that include embodiment, affect,
mindfulness, and visual expressions. Years ago, my student, Marjan, conducted an
independent study on the limitations of English compared to Farsi (Moradzadeh
Miller, 2011). We discussed how language shapes our thinking, from word order
to syntax, intonation, and style. Marjan explained that there are many Farsi words
for love, and that Farsi has a rich vocabulary for nuanced feelings. I will never
forget the poetic imagery of her mother's words for motherly love, which
translates to "I orbit around you."
The philosophers Roland Barthes, Richard Rorty, and Mikhail Bakhtin provide
strategies to overturn ready-made meanings. Bakhtin (1981) galvanizes my
narrative conversations to include vital language with overlaps of space and time.
He uses the word "heteroglossia" to capture the diversity of language that is
"multi-leveled," "like mirrors & each reflecting in its own way a piece, a tiny
corner of the world" (pp. 414-415). Roland Barthes maintains a plurality in
language, disrupting words from submitting to conventional systems. The theorist
Terry Eagleton (1983) explains that to Barthes, a "'healthy' sign & draws attention
to its own arbitrariness" and that, at "the very moment of conveying meaning,
communicates something of its own relative, artificial status..." (p. 135). Barthes
instructs us to participate in texts that move away from the habitual, contrasting
