Two jargons stand radically opposed to one another. On the one hand, there is a jargon of pompousness and pretense. This is the jargon that hides vacuity. It is jargon as the din that disguises emptiness. On the other hand, there is a jargon of abundance. This jargon does not hide vacuity, but instead releases richness. Far from being the din of emptiness, it the resonance of fullness.
I will take these two opposing jargons one at a time, one in each of the two very brief following sections of this post. I will start with the jargon of emptiness.
* * *
“When you have nothing to say, never shut up: ever just keep on pontificating!”
That is the command of the jargon of emptiness.
What I am calling “the jargon of emptiness” is, in effect, the second of three senses for the noun usage of jargon given in Webster’s Online Dictionary. According to that entry, jargon is “obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words.” The use of such language, such “jargon” in the sense at issue, is to call attention to the speaker rather than to what’s spoken of — that is, to what the spoken words themselves give voice.
A famous speaker of the jargon of emptiness
* * *
The jargon of abundance stands in the sharpest possible contrast to the jargon of emptiness. Whereas the jargon of emptiness calls attention to the speaker rather than what voices itself in what the speaker says, it is solely to the spoken-of as such that the jargon of abundance calls those who hear it.
Thus, the jargon of abundance is jargon as the pure echo of what voices itself in what’s said. The jargon of abundance, as I am calling it, is the sheer resounding of that to which the spoken word gives voice, without regard to that voice itself, which vanishes, as it were, before what resounds in it.
In short, the jargon of abundance is pure echo.
* * *
chatter (v.): early 13c., chateren "to twitter, make quick, shrill sounds" (of birds), "to gossip, talk idly or thoughtlessly" (of persons), earlier cheateren, chiteren, of echoic origin.
echo (n.): mid-14c., "sound repeated by reflection," from Latin echo, from Greek ēkhō, personified in classical mythology as a mountain nymph[…], from or related to ēkhē "sound," ēkhein "to resound," from PIE *wagh-io-, extended form of root *(s)wagh- "to resound" (source also of Sanskrit vagnuh "sound," Latin vagire "to cry," Old English swogan "to resound").
glad (adj.): Old English glæd "bright, shining, gleaming; joyous; pleasant, gracious" (also as a noun, "joy, gladness"), from Proto-Germanic *gladaz (source also of Old Norse glaðr "smooth, bright, glad," Danish glad "glad, joyful," Old Saxon gladmod, in which the element means "glad," Old Frisian gled "smooth," Dutch glad "slippery," German glatt "smooth"), from PIE root *ghel- (2) "to shine." Apparently the notion is of being radiant with joy[…].
jargon (n.): mid-14c., "unintelligible talk, gibberish; chattering, jabbering," from Old French jargon "a chattering" (of birds), also "language, speech"[…]. Ultimately of echoic origin (compare Latin garrire "to chatter").
resound (v.): late 14c., resownen, resounen, of a place, "re-echo, sound back, return an echo; reverberate with," from Anglo-French resuner, Old French resoner “reverb- erate" (12c., Modern French résonner), from Latin resonare "sound again, resound, echo" (source also of Spanish resonar, Italian risonare), from re- "back, again" + sonare "to sound, make a noise" (from PIE root *swen- "to sound”).
— Online Etymology Dictionary
In the mythology of ancient Greece, Echo was a Nymph. Nymphs were feminine deities identified with various natural locales. Echo was one of the Oreads, feminine mountain divinities.
Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, was a lecherous old king, which is itself nothing unusual about kings. Zeus lusted not only after human women, but also and especially after female divinities, including the delectable Nymphs. Whether such objects of his lusts were Nymphs of the mountains, of the rivers, or of other places in nature, did not make any great difference to Zeus, lech that he was.
One Nymph Zeus leched after and with was Echo. That Zeus dallied with Echo infuriated Hera, the goddess who was Zeus’s wife.
Hera herself was no slouch at fury. She was, however, no fool. Hence, to retaliate she did not do anything directly to Zeus, that almighty king of the gods. Instead, as is not uncommon for those who feel fury toward anyone whose coercive powers exceeds their own, Hera chose to unleash her fury upon Echo, that object of her husband’s lust.
The punishment Hera inflicted on Echo was to deprive the latter completely of her own voice. Instead of allowing her to speak for herself, all that Hera permitted Echo ever after to do was to repeat the last words that Zeus has spoken to her, comely Nymph that she was. Echo was thereby doomed for all eternity always and only to re-sound those words of that pompous potentate, and never again any words of her own.
Thus did Echo herself become no more than an echo — an echo of the joy Zeus the lech last expressed to her.
The echo of the myth of Echo joyously continues gladly to resound in the jargon of the very words chatter, echo, glad, jargon, joy, and resound themselves, as the etymological entries at the beginning of this concluding section of today’s post chatter in attesting. The jargon of abundance is in fact the chattering as which the echoes of Echo continue the ringing of silence that is the very essence of language itself, at least as Martin Heidegger years ago echoed in defining that essence — defining, that is, das Wesen der Sprache, to jabber a bit in Heidegger’s own Kraut chatter.
Echo, the ancient Greek goddess
NOTE TO MY READERS: After this post, I am taking my usual summer break. My next post is not scheduled to appear on this site until September 11 this year.