Akiga, a Tiv of Nigeria who had received a Western education, heard that his father had killed & flayed one of Akiga's sisters, and given her skin to Akiga's brother to wear at a ceremonial dance. In his autobiography, Akiga tells how he went to the dance, but saw nothing more than his brother dancing, holding a woman's filter & his father's pipe. Yet the following day, the people who had gone to the dance were full of the story of how the brother Hilehaan had danced in his sister's skin. They weren't trying to deceive anyone; they were talking among themselves, discussing the important event they had witnessed. They had obviously perceived "the skin of the sister" (in the filter) "who had been flayed by her father" (in the father's pipe). Only the Western-minded Akiga saw just a filter & a pipe.

This case has been analyzed by the anthropologist Dorothy Lee, who noted that among the Tiv, as with nonliterate peoples generally, the symbol is regarded as an inseparable part of that which literate man believes it merely represents. Here the symbol participates in the total situation so that when the symbol alone is offered, it conveys - it doesn't create or evoke or apply - this value.

Literate man, however, regards the symbol as a neutral label, something to be applied or changed at will. We say, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." We even take the name of God in vain on occasions when we would not welcome His presence, on the assumption the word doesn't convey the thing.

Only in isolated experiences, and these highly emotional, do we retain vestiges of this earlier way of thinking. At funerals, we avoid the emotionally charged word "death." We say, "He's no longer with us," or "He's been taken from us," not, "He's dead." That word would involve us in a reality we couldn't, at that moment, face. Yet we don't say, "Julius Caesar passed away," because we were never emotionally involved with him.

When I teach, if I must refer to bodily functions, I use the Latin terms for defecation & urination, not the better-known Anglo-Saxon ones. Otherwise, there is emotional discomfort.

The same applies to words for sex. Again, Latin is eminently suitable to the classroom since no one makes love in Latin these days.

We hesitate to destroy the portrait of someone we know, especially someone we love. I recall a macabre scene on one "Truth or Consequences" TV show where the guest, a woman sharpshooter, demonstrated her skill by hitting coins tossed into the air. But when stagehands brought out life-size photographs of her children & she was offered the grand prize if she would shoot out their eyes, she declined.

The connection between symbol & thing comes from the fact that the symbol - the word or picture - helps give the "thing" its identity, clarity, definition. It helps convert given reality into experienced reality, and is therefore an indispensable part of all experience.

It's not easy to experience the unfamiliar, the unnamed. We say, "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it," but the phrase really should be, "If I hadn't believed it with all my heart, I wouldn't have seen it."

We might say that the pencil I hold in my hand is a pencil no matter what I call it in French or Chinese or even if I know no name for it. But is that true? A Maidu Indian, as Lee points out, gives no recognition to the pencil as object; instead he perceives the specific act of the hand - in this case the act of pointing with a pencil - and expresses this as "to point with a long thin instrument" (such as a pencil, a straight pipe, a cigarette, or a stick).

There are other people who see the pencil as an extension of the hand and express themselves accordingly.

And so we must ask ourselves, is it a pencil before I call it a pencil, or does it become a pencil in part through my naming it? Any word is far more than just a label, a decal, applied or removed at will. It contains meanings & associations & values which help give the thing its identity.

Even in science the observer is recognized as enmeshed in observed fact. Newton may have been confident that "facts" have a stable eternity outside the contaminating range of our psyche, but we are less confident. We accept that culture & language & other man-made patterns alter experience. Even to observe is to alter, and to define & understand is to alter drastically.

The so-called real world turns out to be not nearly so independent of human consciousness as was once thought. Even the most basic categories of grammar cannot be assumed to be universal. It's natural for us to conjugate & decline from singular to plural, because we begin with the one and go on to the many. Yet the Wintu Indians of California, as Dorothy Lee points out, recognize & perceive first the group and only secondarily the delimited one. They conjugate & decline from plural to singular and sometimes make no linguistic distinction between the one & the many or between the particular & the general.

Once when he was doing fieldwork among the Tikopia of the South Pacific, the British anthropologist Raymond Firth saw several women assembled during a ceremonial cycle. He asked what the women were doing, and was told, "The Atua Fafine [the chief Goddess] it is she."

For all of Firth's effort, it's impossible for him to make this sound logical & acceptable to people who know that ten women are plural; who learn from early childhood that 1 + 1 = 2; and who, when they decline & conjugate, start with one & go to many.

Language does more than label: it defines; it tells not only what a thing is, but also its relation to other things. I may say that this pencil is lying on the table, making both pencil & table nouns, separate objects, with on indicating their relationship. But a Wintu would say, "The table lumps, " or, if there were several things on the table, "The table lumps severally." The Wintu and I experience different realities, not simply the same reality in different ways.

What I've said of language applies to all media. It's often been noted that those who most enjoy ads, already own the products. Ads increase participation & pleasure; they help define experiences. A product without advertising can be, for many people, a nonexperience. And a thought or event that is excluded from all media, or that doesn't lend itself kindly to any available medium, is difficult to experience, even more difficult to convey.