Words Words Words

[andrewducker]

[Poll #332411]

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I think it's more the first two than the rest, though. If I use a word like 'restive' or 'enervated', and you know what it means, then I'm not sure that we have to worry about the Great Unwashed. Restive springs to mind because someone used it on a beta board that I'm on to describe the movement of a character, and the designer came back very tactfully to ask 'are you using 'restive' to mean the times when the character moves around a lot or the times when they don't move at all?'. Words like this are dangerous, though, in environments where you can't assume that the audience has a nuanced vocabulary. I feel like a grumpy old person, though, when I complain about people poaching perfectly good, precise words to use for some much less precise purpose for which there is already a word.

[andrewducker]

You could feel like a grumpy educated person rather than a grumpy old person.

It's a pain bumping into people with lower vocabularies than me.

But then I meet people with better ones, so that keeps me in my place.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Enrvated is tremendously misunderstood so much so it is afamily joke (for my weird family one of whose better qualities is that we all like discussing the meanings of words..)

I do find it a bit irritating that having a good grasp of Latin, French and some Greek I can instinctively work out what most words mean and yet this is regarded as snotty and snobbish rather than helpful in common discourse..

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

What good is a word that only means one thing? ;)

Mmm... linguistics....

[blackmanxy.livejournal.com]

Hm, let's see.

The first two options tend to lead to conflicts when someone decides that their meaning for the word is the only possible one, so the other person is just plain wrong for hearing it another way. Even if I didn't think both were simultaneously true, I'd reject both of these options because they represent attitudes that inhibit effective communication.

The third option is factually incorrect. Period. Many, many words change meanings over time ("silly" alone has had something like 20 different meanings, some of which contradict others), so that's right out. Anyone who's read any Shakespeare or even Victorian-era literature knows better.

The fourth option is partially correct, but not enough to be useful. The dictionary only provides the denotative meaning of words, but so much of language depends on connotative meanings that reading a dictionary is only going to get you so far. If you don't believe me, find someone who is just learning English and see how many common euphimisms they don't understand, even though they know all the words you're using.

If I had to choose one of the first five, the fifth one would be it. For most words, it really is the masses who determine what a word means. Frankly, in common parlance the majority rules, no matter what certain elitist professors of mine have to say about it. (Literature professors, mind you. Linguistics professors know better.) However, that's not the case with technical terminology, which, because of how it is used, must be very precisely defined and can't be subject to the whimsy of the general populace, lest the terms become essentially useless.

That's why I went for the last option. At least partially. It is also important when communicating to consider what someone speaking to you means and to consider how they will interpret your words, otherwise you run the risk of talking in circles for hours and getting nowhere. And yeah, the dictionary has its place, too. The original meanings, though? Trivia. Pure trivia.

And yes, this means that I do think words like hopefully and nauseous, in their common usage today, are functionally correct. In time, the self-appointed custodians of the language will catch up to what the rest of the population already accepts.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

What it means to WHOM?

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the thing -- there's no such thing as intrinsic meaning, so the only reasonable answer is the last one, and what the combination is depends on who's saying it and who's listening.

[andrewducker]

Aye, there's the rub.

Re: definitions

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

Ah. Something near and dear to my heart.

I feel that words mean what you need them to mean at the time that you use them. But if you want communication to take place, you'd better be sure that the people that you are trying to communicate to have at least a similar definition. I've even mentioned this when people have asked me in my sapiosexual post about if they could take part of the definition but not other parts...

After that's all said and done, trying to keep a word similar to what the masses mean and/or what the dictionary says is useful to keep people like me from getting annoyed with the person using the word...

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Actually I would have said at the time (if not trying to get to the beach :-) that you're right into Saussure signifier/signified etc etc here of course - but you got all that in the Coles Notes to Linguistics from your gran, right?? Essentially knowledge is constructed a time of listening, and is merely pointed to by the symbol ("word") used, not contained either in the symbol used nor in one meaning put on that symbol by the author - nor solely rstricted to constructions at any one time.

[andrewducker]

"The Map is not the Territory"

I got all of that way before I bumped into Semiotics :->

The poll was largely a response to Yonmei's Slash poll...

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

A word means whatever I mean when I say it, but which word I choose is based on the hope others think it has the same meaning as me. (Unless I'm trying to be confusing.)

Have you changed your mind on what "morality" means yet?

[andrewducker]

Still going along with the dictionary and my philosophy classes there:

A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct

I believe your definition (being based on empathic response) left Christian morality (for instance) where the basis is God's Will, out of it.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

And wanting to please God is not an empathic response?

Still going along with your dictionary, you mean. If you did that poll, I'm pretty sure you'd find most think morality is Ethics or a conduct of behavior based on an inner conviction. and not Conformity to the rules of right conduct. (To take two nicely juxtaposed entries in Google's definitions of morality.)

[andrewducker]

And wanting to please God is not an empathic response?

Empathy is being affected by other people's emotions. Christian's don't worry about hurting God's feelings - they believe God is the emobiment of rightness.