Adorno, �Words from Abroad”

Jeremy Thomas

“Words from Abroad”, Adorno’s essay in response to the protest against his use of “foreign words”, is an argument in favor of their existence and continued use. Adorno divides this essay into first identifying, what he considers, the cause of the public protest, followed by giving a brief history and explanation of the existence of foreign words in the German language, and lastly he ends by giving over ten examples of why he had to use these foreign words in his radio address on Proust. He begins his defense by analyzing where exactly the protest comes from. Adorno claims that, “the person who is naïve about language will ascribe the strangeness of such writing to the foreign words, which he holds responsible for everything he doesn’t understand” (p185). He connects the discomfort with these words to a “defense against ideas”, the ideas expressed through the history of the word. He expands this thought to identify the frustration felt by the listener or reader as a frustration with his or her own ignorance. This ignorance, Adorno argues, is a result of the esoteric use of foreign words, only the educated, and therefore the elite know their meaning and can use them. Adorno describes the sensations he felt as a child when using these words around adults who were ignorant to their meaning. A sensation, Adorno later describes as an “erotically charged” sensation inherent in the foreign exoticness of the words.

Before Adorno takes the jump into the specific use of foreign words in his essay, he discusses the political and cultural aspects of their existence. He suggests that because Rome was never completely successful in its attempts to conquer Germany, the foreign Latin words were thus never forced into the language. He can then begin to make claims over the significance of language, but more importantly the significance of a word. Foreign words, as he says, “serve the expression of truth” (p189). The construction of language does not necessarily reflect the meaning of its use completely. Foreign words allow us to see the separation between subject matter and thought. The effects of this separation are evident in the way we are confined by our language. I believe Adorno puts it best when he states that “language imprisons those who speak it” (p189). This could not be more to the point. It is because our own languages are not sufficient in expressing the entirety of human emotion and existence we therefore need to share and combined our languages to bring our oral expressions closer to the truth. Adorno ends his essay by doing just that; he provides numerous examples of why foreign words were essential to his essay and that without them it could not have had the same meaning.

Adorno’s essay brings up many interesting effects of the use of language. Foreign words are not just a foreign expression but an identifier of the educated in society. To what extent do we sacrifice the communicative aspects of our work to more precisely express its meaning? Adorno is aware of his arguments and acknowledges the criticism. He makes it clear that language is not rigid and independent; it is very much part of our society and as Adorno puts it; the writer “cannot willfully ignore the historical changes language undergoes in the process of its communicative use. He has to do his formulating from the inside and the outside at the same time” (p198). Language changes and evolves not just from society or just from use and formulation but from both.

· To what extent do we sacrifice the communicative aspects of our work to more precisely express its meaning?

· What should the corrections be in education to address the social implications brought on by the use of foreign words?

· Should this educational issue be addressed?

· What is the role of foreign words in our language?

· How is this role different than it is in German?

· Do the same implications exist with the use of foreign words in our culture?