The City and Human Speech

Bibliographic Data

ID4491593
AuthorsYi-Fu Tuan, Yi‐fu Tuan (corresponding author)
Year1994
Volume84
Issue2
Pages144
Publication date1994-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeographical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/215326
OpenAlexW2316350317
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited1

The city, with its overwhelming physical presence, makes it easy to forget that it owes its origin, continuing existence, renovation, and personality to human speech-the myriad words of varying degrees of effectiveness uttered by public and semipublic officials, the media, poets, and ordinary citizens. THE extraordinary first verses of the Gospel according to St. John are familiar to many readers: the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... All things are made by (the Word), and without (the Word) was not any thing made that was made. Equally famous are the first lines of Genesis, in which God created heaven and earth by a succession of utterances: there be light, and there was light. The Bible tells, moreover, that human beings are made in God's image, which implies that humans too are able to create or to call things into being by naming, as Adam was to do in the Garden of Eden. SPEECH AND BUILDING CONSTRUCTION This emphasis on the creative power of speech is perhaps unique to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one might think that Westerners, who are inheritors of this tradition, would be exceptionally conscious of the potency of words, would use them carefully, and would guard them as though they were sacred. Yet this is not quite the case. In the United States language is often held in disregard, as ineffectual. Real men act rather than speak. Action creates a material world, whereas speech merely describes it. My purpose is to show, through experiences we all share rather than through abstract argument, why this view is mistaken. Words are action; indeed they almost possess the sort of power that God had when He said, there be light, and there was light. Above all, I wish to suggest how the city-its existence and quality-is closely linked to the quality of language, to the words we use to communicate with one another. Let me begin on a personal note. For fourteen years I lived in the Towers Condominium in downtown Minneapolis, and from my tenth-floor unit I felt, proudly, that I had the world at my feet. One of my privileges was to see from my window all the construction work that went on in the city. My perch allowed me to witness the day-to-day procedures and hence every stage of a building's career, from the initial digging of a hole in the ground to the final topping. Yet, despite this close-range observation, when a building was finally completed and fully equipped with elevators, flush toilets, electric

Geography · Linguistics · Communication · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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