Nonsense as a Higher
Form of Language
Nonsense is not nourished by nonsense but by “sense.”
Naomi Lewis
Nonsense supervenes on ordinary language that is meaningful and intelligible. The prefix “non” presents a false picture of nonsense as an inchoate nothingness, and it gives a misleading impression that nonsense is merely the absence of meaning. However, we have seen that nonsense is a complex, intricately structured form of language in its own right.
Nonsense is made up of the same elements that ordinary, intelligible language is. Namely, nonsense consists of sounds, letters, syllables, words, sentences, and so on. Nonsense is rule-governed, as meaningful language is. The departure that makes certain language nonsense is that it follows some rules and breaks other rules in a combination that is unintelligible.
Consequently, in a certain respect, nonsense is more complex than the meaningful, intelligible speech from which it arises and upon which it is founded. To comprehend or elucidate meaningful, intelligible language, we need only to understand the linguistic rules it follows. To comprehend or elucidate unintelligible nonsense, though, we must understand both the rules it follows and the rules it breaks. Accordingly, though, nonsense presents more complicated challenges to the mind than ordinary, meaningful language does.
This inherent complexity makes nonsense a second tier of language, an upper level built on top of ordinary, intelligible language. Hence, nonsense, which is a meaningless, unintelligible, supervenient form of language, might sometimes be in a position to become a higher form of language.
Earlier, we saw that nonsense participates in various transitions. For instance, nonsense occurs in learning a language, drifting from wakefulness into sleep, and escaping to safety from a life-threatening situation. Because it follows some rules and breaks other rules, nonsense is like Janus, the Roman deity who had two faces, one on each side of his head. Janus was the god of such transitions as going from past to future, from one state to another state, and even from one world to another.
Janus was the god of the gate, so he was portrayed with his doorkeeper’s key and a staff. With his two faces, he watched over entrances and exits, and he saw both the external world and the internal world. Nonsense, with its dual nature, is similarly associated with transitions and entranceways.
The basic structural formula that undergirds all nonsense is of vital importance, for it accounts for nonsense’s curious dual nature. Furthermore, it has two thought-provoking implications.
First, nonsense makes no sense because other language does make sense. Nonsense is made from elements of ordinary language that do have meaning. Therefore, there could be no nonsense unless there were some meaningful, intelligible language from which to make it. Nonsense needs the stable structure of ordinary, intelligible language in order to contrast it, for it is only against the background of intelligible and meaningful speech that we can make the judgment that certain other language is nonsense.
Second, nonsense and unintelligibility can be comprehended by reason. Reason and nonsense are direct opposites, so there is an apparent paradox in the whole notion of studying nonsense and taking the subject seriously. One might well object that rational inquiry into nonsense is a self-contradictory and incoherent quest. After all, by definition, nonsense is something meaningless and unintelligible. How could reason apply to something that makes no sense whatsoever and is intrinsically unintelligible?
The universal structural formula of nonsense resolves the seeming paradox. Although nonsense itself is unintelligible, the structural formula that undergirds all nonsense is an intelligible and rationally discernible principle. This has the surprising consequence that unintelligibility itself is an intelligible phenomenon of language and the mind.
The dual structure of nonsense implies that unintelligibility is a two-part mental process, for the mind must subject language to some sort of process just to ascertain that it is unintelligible. Something unintelligible cannot thwart the intellect without somehow first engaging the intellect. Nonsense engages the intellect with elements of intelligible language and by following some linguistic rules. Meanwhile, however, nonsense thwarts the intellect by breaking other linguistic rules. As a result of it following some rules and breaking others, nonsense is unintelligible language.
It follows that nonsense is not formless, and that even meaningless, unintelligible language has rationally discernable rules attached to it. All of the distinct types of nonsense reflect a single unifying structural essence that reason can discover. Therefore, nonsense is a rationally knowable state of language and the mind.
Nonsense is an innate faculty of the mind. An influential academic theory holds that human beings are born preprogrammed for language. Now we realize that nonsense supervenes on meaningful language, so wherever there is language, there is also the potential for nonsense. Nonsense always follows on the heels of meaningful, intelligible language. Therefore, if the influential academic theory is true, the mind has an inborn capacity to create and be affected by nonsense in certain predictable ways. If humans are born preprogrammed for language, then they are born preprogrammed for nonsense, too.
Is that why nonsense sometimes seems uncannily appropriate to certain entities in the extralinguistic world? For an experiment, psychologist Wolfgang Köhler coined the nonsense words “malooma” and “tikiti.” He coined them expressly as meaningless, unintelligible nonsense words to be used in the experiment. First he showed the words to his subjects, then he showed them two drawings. One looked like a fork with spikes and an angular, sharp quality to it. The other was more rounded and had no hard edges. Köhler asked the following question: Which one is the malooma and which one is the tikiti?
More than 90 percent replied that the fork figure was the tikiti and the rounded figure was the malooma. Perhaps this uniform response has to do with synesthesia, the blending of the senses, for the sound of “malooma” is smooth, as are the contours of the rounded figure, whereas the sound of “tikiti” is sharp and spiky, like the fork figure.
Apparently, nonsense can sometimes be a sort of transitional sense, or a trans-sense. We already saw that nonsense is inherent in the mind. Next we will see that nonsense is also an inherently spiritual phenomenon.
Nonsense sometimes interacts with meaningful language to produce synergistic effects. Doo-wop is a form of popular music that originated in the United States in the early 1950s. Doo-wop uses nonsense syllables as harmony, or as the main line of a song. Doo-wop songs contain meaningful words along with the nonsense. In fact, the effect of a doo-wop song depends partly on the balance it strikes between nonsense and meaningful language.
Incidentally, in doo-wop songs, nonsense syllables and meaningful words combined are more forceful and memorable than either is alone. That is, nonsense sometimes acts synergistically with intelligible language to produce enhanced combined effects. Another example is the synergistic use of meaningless refrains in certain enduring nursery rhymes.
Hickory, dickory, dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down
Hickory, dickory, dock
This nursery rhyme is so famous that millions of English-speaking people know it by heart. In an exercise, my students recited the rhyme together as a group to observe how nonsense interacts with intelligible language. First, they recited the rhyme in its entirety. Then, after a brief pause, they recited only the three intelligible lines of the rhyme, namely:
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down
All the students were already very familiar with the nursery rhyme from their childhoods, and they understood that it is centuries old. When they recited the three meaningful lines alone, they instantly realized that the beloved rhyme falls flat without its nonsensical refrain, for the meaningless line “hickory, dickory, dock” at the beginning and the end adds energy to the rhyme.
Reciting the line “hickory, dickory, dock” by itself has a pleasant, musical quality, but without the meaningful lines, it is nonsense hanging in a void. This was how the students comprehended that nonsense and intelligible language sometimes have greater power working together than either of them has working alone.
Shamans in preliterate cultures also apparently understood the same principle. Shaman songs consisted of nonsense syllables and meaningless refrains that were integrated with segments of meaningful, intelligible language. In a later chapter, we will see how shamans sang these songs to induce transformative states of consciousness.
Cross-Dimensional Nonsense
Can human consciousness enter a more inclusive state of existence or a higher dimension? If so, what is it like to experience a change of dimension? These questions are key to understanding the meaning of mystical experiences and other supposedly transcendent states of consciousness. The following argument suggests that a mental transition between dimensions would compel somebody to talk nonsense to describe the experience. Consider a popular drawing by graphic artist M. C. Escher. In the drawing, a stream of water falls from high above over a mill wheel. From there, the stream of water then makes several sharp turns in succession through a series of troughs, flowing consistently downward the entire way. At the end of this downward course, though, the water is again high above the mill wheel, where it originated, rendering that sequence of events unintelligible nonsense.
Now, we could intelligibly describe the two-dimensional surface of this drawing. We could use a ruler, a protractor, and a value scale of all shades from dark black to bright white. We could measure the lengths and angles of all the lines that make up the drawing, then we could characterize the shade of every area of the surface. The task would be time-consuming, but it would result in a precise, meaningful description of the two-dimensional drawing.
However, we cannot intelligibly describe the scene that appears in the drawing. Trying to describe what happens in the scene forces us to talk nonsense. In other words, the mind produces nonsense when it switches from one framework of existence to another framework of existence. We could refer to this type of meaningless, unintelligible language as cross-dimensional nonsense. Are there definitive hallmarks of cross-dimensional nonsense? If we can answer that question, perhaps we can detect when someone’s mind passes into a transcendent state of existence, and that brings us to the spiritual implications of nonsense.