This text, divided into two parts, presents an essay by Mª Ángeles García-Carpintero, an alumna of ISEP’s Master’s in Speech Therapy. The essay can be consulted and downloaded for free. To do so, simply follow this link: ‘The language of mothers. Transmitted and shared language’.
The language
The language that names the world and its things, that allows us to know and re-know ourselves, and through which we understand, express ourselves, and relate to others, shaping our very being in the world, is not our instrument; we do not possess it. It constitutes us; through it, we are.
This reflection, based on the reading of Heidegger, is the melody upon which “The language of mothers“ develops, something that makes much more sense when applied to that felt language with which mothers help us to be.
Language can be maintained from our beginnings in life until the end, even if there is no verbal language, as occurs in neurodegenerative diseases. It is deeper than words, silences, glances, gestures, and touches; it is a melody that is heard and expressed, even without the possibility of using the senses, with the beating of the heart, in the churning of our insides, in our breathing…
The voice is an aspect that shapes our “being in the world.” From the silence from which we come, we recognize the mother’s voice, along with other familiar voices. We listen to the song with which they lull and care for us, or the harmonious and dissonant voices we will gather on our journey, and with which we build our identity and manage to speak with our own modulated voice, a voice that will join others and resonate in others.
We speak based on listening. We teach to speak based on listening. This is what mothers of all times and cultures have done and do; it is what all of us must continue to do: family members, educators, neighbors…
The educational process
To educate is to gather the melodies of those we attend to and return them, harmonizing the ‘I’ and the ‘you,’ the self and the ‘we,’ allowing Meaning to flow between our senses, thoughts, and feelings, helping to give new forms to what is received and transmitted.
We are born with an internal language device, a human genetic potential, the result of the cultural heritage we have been receiving, which will need to mature in a conducive environment through the powerful stimuli of bonding, relationship, and listening.
The importance of protecting this innate device that starts in the maternal womb and optimizing the appropriate spaces and times for these initial stimuli to occur harmoniously has not been sufficiently considered, having been relegated to the domestic sphere and, therefore, to that of women.
We observe a setback in the ability to think, to value, and to establish favorable relationships in the properly human activities we perform through language, which are key to facing the life situations we all go through, to discerning what is correct and choosing the best, to readapting and projecting ourselves.
Is this setback not due to the deterioration of bonds with our mothers and families? Should resources not be allocated to strengthen parenting time? The necessary and already unstoppable participation of women in public life should imply that these aspects are considered and enabled in gender equality.
Following the different linguistic theories along with philosophical and psychological explanations about the being-in-language that we are and about the evolutionary development of language, I emphasize the value of the activities that mothers have traditionally developed and continue to develop in the mother-child relationship.
I try to show the importance of continuing to nurture this initial relationship that enables language and subsequent effective reading learning, without prejudice to it being done in gender equality and diversity of options.
Underlying this guiding thread is a deep substratum: the relationship with my mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for many of her last years, until the end when she left this world having lost everything, everything except the relationship that I was able to maintain with her through the “language of mothers.”
Although I explain different theories of language, I do not intend to create an amalgamation between all of them. Nothing can be better than direct reading. The different theories provide diverse perspectives for contemplating and analyzing what we do when we transmit and share language.
This essay is related to the Master’s in Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychology. If you are interested, do not hesitate to ask us for more information!