Kotodama

Brain lateralization has surprising consequences for the way in which we perceive words and language, as described in The Matter with Things (McGilchrist, 2021):

“Language is a highly complex system, a constantly emerging, and evolving, organism, an embodied aspect of experience, caught up in the fluidity of the reality it reflects. And from the commerce between symbols and what they symbolise two things inevitably follow. In the left hemisphere’s world words are seen as arbitrary signs: in the right hemisphere’s world they are seen as to some extent fused with the aspect of reality they represent.

In other words, tokens or symbols cannot escape being part of the real world in the right hemisphere, and the real world cannot escape becoming tokens or symbols in the left hemisphere. Thus subjects with their left hemisphere experimentally suppressed reported that the sun was so named ‘because it shines’, bread because it is ‘so tasty and fresh’, spaghetti because it’s ‘what you eat with cheese’. They couldn’t accept that objects might be renamed; the name was part of what they were. By contrast, with the right hemisphere suppressed, subjects took the view that names are entirely arbitrary. (Although de Saussure taught that the sign is arbitrary, it is not.)”¹

The embodied nature of language, seen in the strong cross-cultural associations between word sounds and objects, has also been called sound symbolism. Certain sounds naturally evoke qualities like size, shape, or texture. The bouba-kiki effect is one example of this phenomenon, and has been documented across unrelated languages, suggesting a universal human tendency to link sounds to meanings beyond arbitrary convention.²

Elsewhere in The Matter With Things McGilchrist noted evidence for the cross-cultural recognition of value, whether that be moral or aesthetic (as in the example he provided of Bellini’s ‘Casta diva’). If we take all these observations together, I suspect that, were one to combine embodied language with valueception and the ability to presence to the sacred, we would get something akin to Tolkien’s notion of phonaesthetics or perhaps, more tantalizing still, the ancient Japanese belief called kotodama, that words have a sacred or magical power. Koto (言) means language/word, and tama (魂) means soul/spirit. This concept, no doubt, has analogues in many other cultures as well.³

This raises the following question: If language is indeed embodied, and if we are able to presence to the sacred through our embodiment, then would it not stand to reason that when we learn a language, we learn that it embodies not only the various sensory aspects of material reality that it represents, but also the more numinous or sacred aspects of reality as well, that is, those aspects which cannot be so easily grasped and manipulated? As with the bouba-kiki effect, this might also hold across languages and cultures. And if such an insight were incorporated into language learning programs, it might set us upon a firmer philosophical and phenomenological foundation from which to embark on our journey.⁴

But the potential for any of the aforementioned to make even remote sense is almost certainly foreclosed to those who are unable to first entertain the possibility that one might be able to presence to the sacred, or otherwise numinous aspects of the world, in at least some form. But provided one can, then such implications as these may be a live possibility. This touches upon another theme running through all of McGilchrist’s work: presentation and representation must operate in tandem.⁵

What say you? Are there other concepts you may be aware of that are similar to kotodama?⁶

1. McGilchrist later reiterated this point: “If you suppress the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere sees that words have ‘something of the quality’ of what they denote. And so you couldn’t possibly arbitrarily change the name of things. So when subjects [whose LH had been suppressed] were asked “Could bread be called something else?” They replied “No, of course not. Bread’s called ‘bread’ because it’s crusty and delicious and you can eat it with pasta.”

2. One can cite many fascinating examples: Japanese sound symbolism includes extensive onomatopoeias, the face-name matching effect describes how people can match unfamiliar faces to their correct names better than chance, and, though “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” one may rightly be skeptical of that claim!

3. This belief has been reinvented over time, as has its pronunciation. Kotodama is the common modern form, while kototama is sometimes preferred by traditionalists. In China, Xunxi claimed the ancient sage kings chose names (Chinese: 名; pinyin: míng) that directly corresponded with actualities (Chinese: 實; pinyin: shí), but later generations confused terminology, coined new nomenclature, and thus could no longer distinguish right from wrong. Famously, when Confucius was asked what he would do if he was a governor, he said he would rectify the names to make words correspond to reality (cf. Orwell’s concern regarding doublespeak).

4. A possibly similar approach to language learning has been used by missionaries in the past, and still today. Notably the language boot camp of the Mormon church’s Missionary Training Center is widely recognized to be highly effective. Perhaps this is not a coincidence.

5. Presencing to the sacred is a large topic. But to make a long story very short, I believe the concept of philoxenia provides a window into that world. I have an unwritten paper, perhaps book, that is naively titled 主客の言霊 (Shukaku no kotodama), The sacred language of host and guest. There is also a Japanese pop song from 1996 called 愛の言霊 (Ai no kotodama) whose first two lines of lyrics are presented below (in kanji, hiragana, and romaji) along with an approximate English translation:

生まれく叙情詩とは 蒼き星の挿話
夏の旋律とは 愛の言霊

うまれく じょじょうし と は あおき ほし の そうわ
なつ の せんりつ と は あい の ことだま

umare ku jojōshi to wa aoki hoshi no sōwa
natsu no senritsu to wa ai no kotodama

What is the lyrical poem that is born? A side story of the blue planet.
What is the melody of summer? The spiritual words of love.

6. See also: ideasthesia, ideophone, crossmodal, synaesthesia, neurosemiotics, sound symbolism, true name, magic word
Related topics: ritual, ornament, poetry