Language and Its Limitations: Three Metanarratives


Three main metanarratives, grand schemes for interpreting and writing history, of modern history are:

1. The heroic model of progress due to scientific thinking

2. The development of America as a nation

3. The ideas of modernism.

Each of these three have influenced how we learn, what we learn, and how we view ourselves and others.

Postmodernists reject all three of these as fictions created by Western thinking, among all other labels including being called postmodernists. In their view, all "truth" arrived at is a mirror of the real world and cannot be seen as reality in the true sense. Though some argue whether language is at fault, due to its nature, or if simply living within the context of culture prevents us from ever dealing with reality most postmodernists see the creation of narratives as truthseeking.

Practical realists look at these narratives as a reflection of the real world due to the fact that even though we are not dealing with direct reality we are also not dealing with things simply in our head. The conventions and conceptual schemes we place on the world "out there" are based, at least partly, on reality because they do have meaning derived from the objective world.

In my view we need to wade through and be conscious of the different aspects of truth seeking. When approaching a discipline like History we cannot pretend to be dealing with Truth but we cannot also disregard all the knowledge we do have. Teaching History and other subjects should be infused with the methods, nature, and purposes along with the limitations, problems, and shortcomings involved with the subject. We do not arrive at objective truth by study and scholarship but get closer to it by discussion, refutation, criticism, and skepticism. Only through this interaction with each other do we get close to Truth no matter how far away it will always be.

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