Expressive Language

The expressive language essay seemed to focus on the practical use of language rather than language for the sake of art. But then again art has a practical purpose, and like the spoken word it often to get across a message. But then what is the difference between true poetry and giving some one direction to a restaurant or telling them to “watch out?” like Orwell the author of this essay seems to think language is power. But unlike Orwell ‘s essay on language, Baraka doesn’t tell how to one how to use language or how to write well, he just says speech is a tool we all use it differently, words mean different things to us, words have different connotations depending on who says them. I think Orwell comes short in his rules for writing after reading this. Orwell mentioned that you should always come up with your own metaphors never use expressions you’ve heard before, but aren’t these expressions part of your cultural language? These expressions will be widely understood they make it easy to communicate to the masses. It is possible to make up your own metaphors but you also have to keep your audience in mind and keep yourself in mind. You can’t make up a metaphor that people of your culture wont resonate with or that you couldn’t pull off saying. In this essay Baraka points out the complexity of understanding language based on your back ground, and it seems daunting but also the variety of connotations for words allows for possibility, he implies language as something malleable that we can define. Baraka has an interesting writing style. He writes long elaborate explanatory sentences that are embellished with a few big words here and there, but also uses short statements to get his point across. When you get into the rhythm of a long sentence and you suddenly change it with a short sentence, the short statement is emphasized. This makes him easy to understand it also makes his words sound more powerful. It’s effective and rhythmic. It sounds quite spoken the way he wrote it, not in that generic essay structure