Photo by Laurenz Kleinheider on Unsplash
The other day, I was writing a description of a bed and wanted to describe one side and then the other. I suddenly realized that it was difficult to describe the two sides. “Left” and “Right”? That would depend on whether you were taking the perspective of someone standing at the foot of the bed looking at it, or someone actually in the bed. If in the bed, are they prone or supine? You could resort to compass points (such as “east” and “west”) but only if the reader knew the orientation of the bed on the earth’s coordinate system. “Stage right” and “stage left” could probably stand in, but there’s no actual stage and I could see it being confusing, particularly for a reader whose first language isn’t English.
I was reminded of the first time someone (my high school physics teacher) asked “can someone explain why a mirror reverses left and right, but not up and down?” He wasn’t so much interested in the physics of it, which isn’t complicated, but in how people would formulate an explanation.
So much of language necessarily makes assumptions about the perspective of the listener.
Photo by David Huck on Unsplash
—2p