When I think of how much time is spent by bloggers and professors alike obsessing over the accuracy of spelling and grammar, it gets my goat that a similar discussion on the meanings of words is all but non-existent.
While u probly hv no trubl undrstndin dis sentance despit me havin tttly f!$*ed up the use of the gerund…. our true problem with communication seems to have far more to do with the fact that not only do we not agree on what words MEAN, the idea that we might NOT agree is not even in the line of fire.
Consider, for example, the obvious confusion resulting when any two people don’t, for example, agree to the same rules for a game. Not only does it make for unsatisfying play, but you could never build something as complex as the National Football League if teams refused to discuss, and accept, a common set of parameters.
Define your terms and use those to build more complicated ideas. This is basic to success, and basic to understanding.
It’s like our obsession with the concept of “freedom” has extended to the belief that you can use a word however you want, and through sheer force of will or personality make it mean what you want.
For a solipsist, maybe this is a fine idea. But communication is about mutual understanding, and that understanding requires that at least the building blocks of discourse are agreed upon.
My fascination with language results primarily from the observation that everyone communicates slightly differently, even given the same basic tools. Add to that a world culture constantly in flux, with new words drifting between languages, new words being coined to address new situations, and you have a dynamic system with the complexity and subtlety with the potential to facilitate any number of brilliant new descriptions and synergies.
But if you decide that the tools don’t matter, you halt exploration and growth at its most primative level.
Is it ignorance or deliberate deception that causes people to redefine language to mean what suits their purpose instead of what would make their intentions plain?
The blatant misuse of simple terms has made the current American Presidential race into less of a discourse and more of a marketing campaign. After all, what the hell does “Family Values” even mean? It’s a slogan, not a concept. It may carry a certain emotional connotation, but the words themselves are empty.
You have to wonder every time a politician is caught in an adulterous relationship after espousing those phantom “values.” Without definition, a word or phrase can mean whatever someone wants it to, and can change its definition on a whim. What’s to say that adultery wasn’t considered part and parcel with Family Values if no one said it wasn’t? Who’s to say that asking for forgiveness after an affair doesn’t make it all go away?
If you refuse to agree on your terms, nothing is a lie. Your words were merely misinterpreted by someone who didn’t know how you were using them.
If “freedom” can include giving up the rights that the American founding fathers considered unalienable, we’re in big trouble. If words cannot be redefined by common consent so that “All men are created equal” can be understood to include blacks and women, we are similarly, in a word that has managed to never really be misunderstood, fucked.
You don’t have to go as far back as Orwell to watch people redefining language at will, calling Freedom Slavery or War Peace. You don’t even have to look at the greater, more sinister uses of misdefined language.
Communication problems exist everywhere in everyday life. If you and your spouse don’t have a definition of “sharing the housework,” you’re going to have problems. If you and your spouse don’t have a solid understanding of “infidelity,” you’ll probably have more.
Bad spelling and grammar are a combination of laziness, lack of standard education, fluid communication techniques like texting and blogging, and of course a sense that they really don’t matter that much.
But please, let’s try to decide that the meanings of the words we use are important, no matter how we choose to spell them or what language we say them in. After all, my freedom includes the dictionary definition.
