Much-admired narrative of hope, buoyancy and coherence creates an illusion of meaning that puts us beyond the bounds of prudence. The language of inanity becomes the indomitable life force and it is skilfully inserted into slogans, songs and day-to-day conversation as a result. Meaninglessness becomes synonymous with optimism, prosperity and a new beginning. A popular advertising jingle “Is ko laga dala to life Jhingalala” underscores the point as people relish the sound without showing any concern for meaning. One has to understand changing dynamics of meaning where deliberate spouting of meaninglessness becomes dominant discourse and it is blatantly used for cross commercialism. These sort of pertinent and perceptive points were made in a two-day national seminar on “Meaning of Meaninglessness” organised by the Department of Linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University recently.
Noted academic and linguist Professor A.R. Faithi described Jhingalala as a meaningless decorative expression that gained currency as it was repeated time and again. Spelling out the contours of meaningless he said, people tend to believe that the jingle does convey something but it is a combination of buzzing sounds without meaning. “The example of Jhingalala suggests that there is a widespread contemporary use of words like that on the part of politicians, critics, literary historians, sociologists and the like for describing a socio-historical, psychological fact of our life.”
He had a point in his assertion but acceptability of senselessness betrays much more. It reveals an unholy alliance between power that be and corporate houses for determining the meaning. On the one hand, meaningful and coherent expressions are used by the power-hungry politicians to colonise the meaning and the ever-shrinking semantic space is usurped by the multinationals by using preposterous vocabulary cleverly.
Initiating the debate, eminent critic Professor Shamim Hanfi said that words used in advertising make our sense of judiciousness obtuse. Words once held in high esteem such as revolution and liberty have become inconsequential and tawdry. Now we talk about revolution in textile and footwear industry and want liberty for sipping a particular brand of soft drink, etc. For him insistence on one fixed meaning or one meaning is nothing but an act of fascism that must be resisted.
Here one feels tempted to recall Susan Sontag who talked out how meaning and meaninglessness complement each other and inanity of language creates narrative space and creative oeuvre draws its substance from the paradoxical relationship between meaning and meaninglessness. Writing always fluctuates between intended import of the meaning and the banal interruption. Interpretation can only survive as a meaningful exercise if it keeps the text open for interpretation.
A number of eminent critics scholars and linguists from Delhi, Kashmir, Ranchi, and other parts of the country participated in the two-day national seminar. The issue of translation and interpretation of the sacred texts did come in for a lively and informed debate. Noted scholar Professor A.R. Kidwai delivered a perceptive lecture on Huroof-e-Muqattat (The disjointed letters or mysterious letters used in Quran). It has been a subject of extensive research and Professor Kidwai did refer to the prevalent views on the subject. For him the use of such words cannot be explained easily as these words do not necessarily denote names and qualities of God. Similarly they are not just sync with the poetic tradition of Arab. It is an act of divine that defies easy elucidation.
