There Is No “Why” in the World#6
arbitrariness
What do we call this?
In English, it is called tree.
In Russian, derevo.
In Korean, namu.
That is what we call it.
But here a question arises.
Why is this called “tree”?
A Swiss linguist explained this question through the concept known as the “arbitrariness of language.”
According to him, language consists of form and content.
He called the sound that is perceptually expressed the signifier, and the concept that the expression refers to the signified.
He argued that there is no essential connection between the two.
The signifier and the signified are separate elements that cannot access each other’s reality; they are merely arbitrarily linked.
In other words, the reason English speakers call this object tree cannot be explained by any necessary cause.
We may think about why we say things the way we do.
But we can also go one step further and ask another question:
Why do we ask why we say things the way we do?
When linguists surveyed hundreds of languages, they found something surprising: the word for “tree” shows almost no common pattern across languages.
Personally, tree and derevo do not sound particularly similar to me.
But what about the following experiment?
A linguist conducted an interesting experiment.
One of the two shapes in the image is called “Bouba,” and the other is called “Kiki.”
Which one is Bouba, and which one is Kiki?
The results were striking. Most participants chose the spiky shape as Kiki and the rounded shape as Bouba.
What is even more interesting is that when the experiment was conducted with English speakers in the United States and Tamil speakers in India, the results were almost identical.
Despite the fact that the languages were completely different, 95–98% of participants gave the same answers.
The explanation that language is arbitrary may seem convincing.
But is language truly arbitrary?
Or have we simply not yet discovered the pattern?
Just as people sometimes attempt to explain everything that cannot be accounted for by consciousness using the concept of the “unconscious,” have we simply agreed to call what we do not understand “arbitrary”?