A very important subject in the work of Suzanne Vega is the reflection about words and language. Many of her songs deal with the problem of using words, among them Language which was written in 1986. In this song, the narrator expresses her doubts whether words are capable of expressing what one thinks or feels. Words do not suffice anymore to say what the narrator wants to say, because they "are too solid/ they don't move fast enough". The thought is always quicker than the word and cannot be caught by language. Words are not flexible enough, are too solid. The image of Times Square with its huge advertisements springs to mind. Solid, gleaming letters that always say the same, that will not change, that are static and inflexible.
In contrast to those words the singer sees the silence, a rare item in the city, which is paradoxically "...more eloquent / than any word could ever be". She pictures a perfect place, timeless and placeless, where there is silence and peace. A place in the city that is taken out of time, that is close to nature ("and the river is there / and the sun and the spaces/ are all laying low"). It is silent there and the rest of the city just falls away.
The narrator goes on to tell us that she "won't use words again" because they cannot convey the depth and complexity of her feelings and thoughts. She is not content with what she says but cannot find another way of expressing herself. The solution she suggests lies in a structural change of language. She wishes that "language were liquid", so it could move faster, adapt more easily and could be "rushing in". (The connection between words and water is a common one in Vega's work and will be referred to later on.)
There is an odd paradox nature to the song that becomes obvious in lines like "a silence more eloquent/ than any word could ever be", "placeless place" and by the situation that the narrator explains to us in a very poetic way that she will not use words again. By this she is mixing the sentence level with the meta-level of the language. The sentence is a statement about itself and therefore the reader gets confused. This paradox can also be found in the music, especially in the time. The song is written in a 6/8 (12/16) time, and by punctuated notes and special off-beat stresses, a  strange and confusing polyrhythm is created. In the first part of the song the listener is not sure whether the song is basically in a 3/4 or 4/4 time. Both beats carefully work against each other. The confusion is intensified by the polyphonic vocals which set in in the second verse.
In the instrumental part there seems to be an open fight, the harmony jumps into an unrelated key, and toward the climax of the instrumental part the tension builds up and is relieved when the song continues with the third stanza in the normal harmony. By using a melody which now consists only out of quavers that stress the beat, the 6/8 time seems to be the dominant beat now.
The song fades out with the repetition of the word "gone". By singing it over and over again the word becomes meaningless, it loses its semantic content and starts to sound weird. But this is just how the narrator says she perceives language: as meaningless and unable to express what she thinks and feels.

The lyrical I in Rusted Pipe also has difficulties to express herself, but in this song this is due to her inability to speak. "I fear I only/ croak and sigh". She has not spoken for a long time and has to learn it anew. Rusted Pipe is not only a brilliant example of the use of onomatopoeic words, but it picks up the idea that language is connected to water. ("Moan the words like water") Language is nothing that can be handled with ease, one needs a certain skill and this skill can be lost if one does not speak for a long time.

The fear of not being able to talk, to communicate is expressed even more explicitly in Blood Makes Noise from 1992. The narrator wants to talk but she cannot because of the roar and the din in her head. She wants to speak but is shut off from the outside world by the noise in her body. Being isolated and unable to express herself, her fear is growing. ("I can't really hear you/ in the thickening of fear") The only hope the protagonist has is to wait for the silence to return. Blood Makes Noise is a song which shocks when being listened to for the first time. It is noisy and aggressive, underlined with 'industrial' percussion and a heavy bass line. The words are spoken hecticaly rather than sung, the voice is split in two. On the right speaker one hears the clear voice, on the left speaker one hears a distorted voice, as if sung through a megaphone. (And in fact this is what Suzanne does when she performs this song on stage.) By having this distorted voice, the impression of hearing oneself speak at a distance is created. Like in a feverish dream the narrator hears herself "through the thickening of fear". In Blood Makes Noise the music very consistently stresses the lyrics and creates a scary atmosphere. Language cannot be handled because one has lost the ability to do so. But exactly this causes great fear, because being able to communicate by words is essential in the city, where feelings and emotions do not mean much.

This idea is expressed in Big Space. The song starts with a conversation and during the poem the narrator states "Between the pen and the paperwork/ I know there's passion in the language/ Between the muscle and the brainwork/ there must be feeling in the pipeline". The narrator misses the emotions and the feelings which got lost in the daily routine of producing words and language. The process of producing words has become an end in itself and is reduced to mechanical movements only. The joy and pleasure language can offer is no longer seen, it is not more than mere "paperwork".
In the city, emotions and feelings are not worth anything, they all "fall into the big space" and are swept up like garbage. The narrator wants to look behind the facade, wants to break up the duty and the discipline of the citylife. She is sure that emotions and feelings are hidden behind the cold and indifferent faces of the people, even though they are not shown. Big Space shows a critical view on modern day values, in which feelings are treated like trash and the language has lost its beauty and passionate component.

Another song I would like to include in the discussion, even though it does not explicitly say that it is about language, is Salt Water. The text does not mention the words "language" or "word", but this was my first association when I heard it. "Taste this/ it's really good/ it will make your mouth/ feel like something's in it". In an interview Suzanne once said: "To me, language is very physical. [...] I use words for the way they feel in my mouth, as well as for their meaning."(5)
In Salt Water, the language (if one agrees that the song is about language) is "raw", "comes with the skin/ and the sand still on it." It is unspoiled, pure and natural and it comes out of the ocean, the beginning of all life. Language is vital and powerful and "it's really good." And somehow not only the line "cradled once/ and cooling twice" reminds one of the Walt Whitman poem Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, in which "the word final, superior to all", that "strong and delicious word" comes out of the sea. In my opinion, in Salt Water the narrator tries to rediscover the origin of language, from which the modern world with all its static and sober use of words has alienated her.

All the songs mentioned above stress the need in the modern world to communicate, to interact with other people. But there is a great fear of not being able to do this, because one cannot produce sounds and words or because language is not capable any more of transmitting one's thoughts and emotions.
At the same time the desire to go back to the origin of language becomes obvious, to rediscover its emotional value that has been neglected in modern life and in the use of it. It is striking that words are over and over again connected to nature, to water and the ocean in particular. Perhaps these images are rooted in the idea that language is not something created by humans, but that it is a 'natural thing', an almost living being that can not be ruled by people but has its own life.