the sentence

If a word can represent a notion, a mere infant in metaphoric form, then a sentence could be considered yet a child in the metaphoric world; somewhat coherent, more individual, but still able to fluctuate as it moves, sometimes clumsily, through context. Of course there are multiple ways of looking at this; a sentence can be a conglomeration of words, ideas beginning to form a more evolved and specialized organism, or sentences can be single notions and ideas in themselves. Like a cell made up of different parts and characteristics which all work towards a single function; or at least singular at any given instant, though this function can also change instantly and without warning. That being said we have to take into consideration the large variety of functions that a single sentence can have, and how to at least attempt to differentiate these functions from each other. Difficultly does arise, admittedly, in different reader interpretations, but for the purposes of this paper I will define “function” as usage, and “meaning” as personal interpretation reflection and/or meditation on the sentence in question. You might, for instance, buy a Dr. Seuss book for your child because they are a commonly accepted for early readers, even you yourself might suspect it is secretly a political doctrine of some kind. Although, I think it can generally be said be that most people will not read Dr. Seuss the same way they read, say, the politically defining “Declaration of Independence”, or that we do not read the metaphoric and poetic works of Shakespeare the same way we read the somewhat eccentric, though still very metaphoric and poetic in his own way, Burroughs. Although truly, these two authors, and so, so many more, write sentences so well that even my rather simple definition of function becomes useless and not helpful in the least. The sentences defy me.
The ever useful Oxford English Dictionary turns up, out of many others, this for the definition of a sentence, “A series of words in connected speech or writing, forming the grammatically complete expression of a single thought; in popular use often, such a portion of a composition or utterance as extends from one full stop to another. In Grammar, the verbal expression of a proposition, question, command, or request, containing normally a subject and a predicate.” Now that is a sentence, but what of it? For one thing, I definitely do not agree with the idea that a sentence can only be a single thought. I would even go so far as to say that the quote contradicts itself; the first sentence gives us at least two ideas. One idea is what the sentence will contain (that is, thought) and the other describes the how the sentence is built grammatically. This idea is reconciled, although not expressly, in the subtext of the entry: “English grammarians usually recognize three classes: simple sentences, complex sentences (which contain one or more subordinate clauses), and compound sentences (which have more than one subject or predicate).” So at the very least, a sentence will at least have some sort of grammatical structure which will hopefully allow us to recognize a sentence as a sentence. Beyond this though, not much is certain, if we look at the interpreted meaning of any given sentence we would almost certainly find that everyone will come up with at least a slightly different idea of what thought or thoughts the sentence is trying to communicate. And while the interpretations of our peers will probable seem more valid and useful to us, we can’t just write off some one’s ideas. In this sense, any sentence could present an infinite number of ideas across the world. Some of this might seem problematic or even paradoxical at first. With so much room for interpretation, how does a sentence manage to communicate anything mutually accepted enough to be useful? Even to have an argument or to disagree about the meaning of the sentence, you have to at least believe that the opposing side’s ideas are plausible interpretations. This is where context becomes important; where a sentence is created and where it is received have huge impacts on how they are read and understood. I know from experience, for instance, that Shakespeare is not read the same when blocking lines on a stage as it is in an English class. Context, also, is incredibly vast, multilayered, and in constant motion. It would be impossible to list all the contexts that we are part of in this university setting, but luckily they seem to merge together well enough that some form of communication takes place, is encouraged even, within them.
Still, there is so much more to the sentence than any of this. I want to turn it inside out and twist it, to show a few more, but not all, of its forms and dimensions. Most people probably know off hand, for instance that a sentence can also be a judgment. So to be sentenced to fifteen years in prison for example, is a sentence in sentence form. More than that, a person cannot, or at least isn’t supposed to, be detained in the United States without a proper trial; most of which contain many of these sentence-actions. J.L. Austin gets the credit, not for inventing them, but for pointing them out to us, and giving them a name; the performative. From his lecture “How to do things with Words” Austin gives us this as a description of performatives, “The uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action, which again would not normally be described as, or as ‘just’, saying something.” The examples that he gives us of performatives are things like bets; you can’t make a bet without opening with: “I bet you…”. So in this sense the sentence is the action, and moreover, it is distinct from a simple statement. Austin’s views may be yet too narrow however; since no statement could exist without the words attached to it. By this logic a statement is a performative, and the same goes for descriptions, questions, and orders. Maybe I am stretching Austin’s ideas farther than I ought to, but language, and therefore sentences, were created with the intention that they do things. “How to do things with Words” may be a misleading title. If I could impart one thing to the audience of this paper, I think it would be that words, sentences, paragraphs –communication techniques and methods are always doing things if they are being used. Is it even possible to utter something just for the sake of utterance?
What I feel that we cannot over look in an exploration like this one are our peers; since in reality, everyone around us has enough common experience with sentences to be useful in this endeavor. I asked one person one question, and the amount of insight I derived from his answer set me thinking for days. You could ask Jesse Hutchings if he considers himself an expert on sentence use. He would probably say no, but I feel like it would be perfectly valid for him to answer yes. I asked him what he feels he is trying to do by using sentences; his answer was, “When I use a sentence I consider it one part of a bigger picture; implying that there is yet more to come. I try to create a functional machine.” I thoroughly enjoyed Jesse’s opinions on the matter of sentences. I feel that there is certainly a need to be able to look at sentences as single structures, or machines, but to also consider the bigger machine –the book, the day, the paragraph, the film, among others. But I feel that the last part of the quote is the most profound; that perhaps all our task is as writers is to make our sentences functional machines. The usage of these machines is completely up to the reader. Functionality, somewhat contrarily to my earlier proposition, does not need to be commonly agreed on, nor does a specific function need to be set by an author. Overarching functionality over specific function; I know, and care not what you take from my writing, only that you do take something.