What's the point in discussing a word's definition?
[cross-posted at StevePavlina.com: http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/spirituality-consciousness-awareness/7193-whats-point-discussing-words-definition.html#post72780 ]
A lot of what I'm going to say has already been said. By me, but also by some others. The most recent I've heard, and my current favorite, is Erin McKean's talk at Google, "Verbatim". It's a little under an hour long, but she goes through much of what I have to say more humorously (and in slightly more detail).
"Verbatim" - Erin McKean - Google Video
Here's my thesis: Definitions are arbitrary. Entirely arbitrary. Words mean anything and everything you want them to. If you agree with this, then I'm only providing facts; if you disagree, read on. My objective is to explain why I harp on definitions so often.
I begin with linguistics: an excerpt from Chaucer's Cantebury Tales:But, Lord Crist! whan that it remembreth me
Upon my yowthe, and on my jolitee,
It tikleth me aboute myn herte rote.
Unto this sday it dooth myn herte bote
That I have had my world as in my tyme.
Isn't it remarkably similar to English? What you see here is an ancestor of American English, a language about 500 years old. Older ancestors are Germanic and Latin. On the other hand, we have Chinese.
Source: The Bloom is not a Bloom
Or sign language: Sutton Signwriting
So concludes my first argument: words are malleable. They are infinitely malleable. And if something is so malleable, how can it have a fixed definition? Thus, any definition has, at best, a lifespan longer than yours. At worst, it will mean something else the next time you hear it. Does "flame" mean your latest girlfriend or what you use to boil water? I'll come back to this.
Next, let's turn to the art of lexicography. In contrast to the Wikipedia article, I will put forward two types of dictionaries: prescriptivist and descriptivist. These are linguistic techniques, of course, but that's beside the point.
The iconic prescriptivist lexicographer, for me, is Noah Webster. His Wikipedia article says, "Webster dedicated his Speller and Dictionary to providing an intellectual foundation for American nationalism." Have you ever wondered why the British spell words funny? "Colour" instead of "color", for instance? Webster was responsible.
Most dictionaries, on the other hand, are descriptivist. How so? How is a dictionary compiled? The process is actually rather straight-forward, if time-consuming and tedious for all but the most dedicated. A lexicographer reads. A lot. They find thousands of examples of a word in usage--in living text, so to speak--and abstract their understanding of each word into a description, or definition, of that word.
Does that honestly sound like an authority to you? A dictionary definition is, in other words, some group's opinion of how most people use it most of the time. You can't be sure when, exactly, that was; if a dictionary has 10,000 words, when do you think each was last researched? You know what nice means, right? Check out its entry in the OED. If I recall correctly, it's three pages long.
This is my second argument: dictionaries are unreliable, because they are written by people. While they may be divided into 66 books and as many authors, they are not divinely inspired, as far as any religious group has claimed. (Though when I see the rise of the Cult of the Lexicographer, I think I will just run.) And if you happen to be a Judeo-Christian: thou shalt have no idols, no other gods before me. Worship not thy Dictionary, though thou shalt continue to eat thy daily Word. A dictionary is wrong, unless you already agree with it. It is not an authority. As McKean says (paraphrased), "Look up your favorite word. See if you agree with the definition."
For my next act, I'm going to anticipate an objection. For this, we go back to linguistics. What is the purpose of language? What is language?
Language is a (1) vocabulary and (2) grammar for the purpose of (3) communication. Each of these three things are necessary for a system to be a language. A programming language is such because it communicates instructions from a human programmer to a computer-run interpreter, compiler, or assembler. Slang, and vulgarities, are part of language because it communicates something, and has restricted uses. People who violate those restrictions (grammatical) are usually shrugged off by the culture as posers.
What role does a definition play in this? They connect words (parts of a vocabulary) to actual meaning. The word "shred" means one thing to an XML programmer (extracting the elements from a document) and another thing to an office worker (destroying a physical document). From one XML programmer to another, they understand the word "shred". But if an XML programmer emailed an XML file to an office worker and said, "Shred this, please," the office worker would be deeply confused.
Thus, in order for communication to occur successfully, the words used by both participants (both sender and receiver) must refer to reasonably similar meanings. That is to say, their definitions have to be similar. That is what a dictionary is: it's a way for one person to say, "This is what I mean by 'shred'."
This is why "flame" may refer to either a person or a fire. It depends entirely on context. Communication is a transmission of information, and all information comes inside a context. If a mutual friend comes up and asks, "How is Alex's latest flame?", (assuming Alex isn't a pyromaniac) we can safely suppose he's talking about a person. On the other hand, if my friend says, "Turn the flame down," he probably isn't talking about Patricia.
And that is my third argument: definitions must be agreed upon for words to be useful. I refer to this as a shared culture. Two people share the same culture when they use the same word in the same manner. What was the objection I was answering, you might be wondering? It's, "If words are malleable and dictionaries are unreliable, how is it anyone understands me when I say anything?" Because we share the same culture. This entire essay would be gibberish to Chaucer, you know.
So, hopefully, using my three arguments, I've shown that there's a need to agree on definitions when opening into a discussion. This is something that philosophers and scientists are constantly doing. In science, they do it at the beginning of their papers, explaining what they're measuring and how and why. In philosophy, they're establishing what they're talking about as a premise.
In my experience, many, many disagreements can be traced back to a disagreement in definition. A person might view a marriage as a union of companions and their spouse might view it as a way to get a green card. And, unless they learn of this and reconcile their beliefs--their definitions--openly, their marriage will fall apart. I'm not suggesting that a perfect word-to-meaning lexicon will solve the world's problems, but it would certainly make it possible to actually talk.
A lot of what I'm going to say has already been said. By me, but also by some others. The most recent I've heard, and my current favorite, is Erin McKean's talk at Google, "Verbatim". It's a little under an hour long, but she goes through much of what I have to say more humorously (and in slightly more detail).
"Verbatim" - Erin McKean - Google Video
Here's my thesis: Definitions are arbitrary. Entirely arbitrary. Words mean anything and everything you want them to. If you agree with this, then I'm only providing facts; if you disagree, read on. My objective is to explain why I harp on definitions so often.
I begin with linguistics: an excerpt from Chaucer's Cantebury Tales:But, Lord Crist! whan that it remembreth me
Upon my yowthe, and on my jolitee,
It tikleth me aboute myn herte rote.
Unto this sday it dooth myn herte bote
That I have had my world as in my tyme.
Isn't it remarkably similar to English? What you see here is an ancestor of American English, a language about 500 years old. Older ancestors are Germanic and Latin. On the other hand, we have Chinese.
Source: The Bloom is not a Bloom
Or sign language: Sutton Signwriting
So concludes my first argument: words are malleable. They are infinitely malleable. And if something is so malleable, how can it have a fixed definition? Thus, any definition has, at best, a lifespan longer than yours. At worst, it will mean something else the next time you hear it. Does "flame" mean your latest girlfriend or what you use to boil water? I'll come back to this.
Next, let's turn to the art of lexicography. In contrast to the Wikipedia article, I will put forward two types of dictionaries: prescriptivist and descriptivist. These are linguistic techniques, of course, but that's beside the point.
The iconic prescriptivist lexicographer, for me, is Noah Webster. His Wikipedia article says, "Webster dedicated his Speller and Dictionary to providing an intellectual foundation for American nationalism." Have you ever wondered why the British spell words funny? "Colour" instead of "color", for instance? Webster was responsible.
Most dictionaries, on the other hand, are descriptivist. How so? How is a dictionary compiled? The process is actually rather straight-forward, if time-consuming and tedious for all but the most dedicated. A lexicographer reads. A lot. They find thousands of examples of a word in usage--in living text, so to speak--and abstract their understanding of each word into a description, or definition, of that word.
Does that honestly sound like an authority to you? A dictionary definition is, in other words, some group's opinion of how most people use it most of the time. You can't be sure when, exactly, that was; if a dictionary has 10,000 words, when do you think each was last researched? You know what nice means, right? Check out its entry in the OED. If I recall correctly, it's three pages long.
This is my second argument: dictionaries are unreliable, because they are written by people. While they may be divided into 66 books and as many authors, they are not divinely inspired, as far as any religious group has claimed. (Though when I see the rise of the Cult of the Lexicographer, I think I will just run.) And if you happen to be a Judeo-Christian: thou shalt have no idols, no other gods before me. Worship not thy Dictionary, though thou shalt continue to eat thy daily Word. A dictionary is wrong, unless you already agree with it. It is not an authority. As McKean says (paraphrased), "Look up your favorite word. See if you agree with the definition."
For my next act, I'm going to anticipate an objection. For this, we go back to linguistics. What is the purpose of language? What is language?
Language is a (1) vocabulary and (2) grammar for the purpose of (3) communication. Each of these three things are necessary for a system to be a language. A programming language is such because it communicates instructions from a human programmer to a computer-run interpreter, compiler, or assembler. Slang, and vulgarities, are part of language because it communicates something, and has restricted uses. People who violate those restrictions (grammatical) are usually shrugged off by the culture as posers.
What role does a definition play in this? They connect words (parts of a vocabulary) to actual meaning. The word "shred" means one thing to an XML programmer (extracting the elements from a document) and another thing to an office worker (destroying a physical document). From one XML programmer to another, they understand the word "shred". But if an XML programmer emailed an XML file to an office worker and said, "Shred this, please," the office worker would be deeply confused.
Thus, in order for communication to occur successfully, the words used by both participants (both sender and receiver) must refer to reasonably similar meanings. That is to say, their definitions have to be similar. That is what a dictionary is: it's a way for one person to say, "This is what I mean by 'shred'."
This is why "flame" may refer to either a person or a fire. It depends entirely on context. Communication is a transmission of information, and all information comes inside a context. If a mutual friend comes up and asks, "How is Alex's latest flame?", (assuming Alex isn't a pyromaniac) we can safely suppose he's talking about a person. On the other hand, if my friend says, "Turn the flame down," he probably isn't talking about Patricia.
And that is my third argument: definitions must be agreed upon for words to be useful. I refer to this as a shared culture. Two people share the same culture when they use the same word in the same manner. What was the objection I was answering, you might be wondering? It's, "If words are malleable and dictionaries are unreliable, how is it anyone understands me when I say anything?" Because we share the same culture. This entire essay would be gibberish to Chaucer, you know.
So, hopefully, using my three arguments, I've shown that there's a need to agree on definitions when opening into a discussion. This is something that philosophers and scientists are constantly doing. In science, they do it at the beginning of their papers, explaining what they're measuring and how and why. In philosophy, they're establishing what they're talking about as a premise.
In my experience, many, many disagreements can be traced back to a disagreement in definition. A person might view a marriage as a union of companions and their spouse might view it as a way to get a green card. And, unless they learn of this and reconcile their beliefs--their definitions--openly, their marriage will fall apart. I'm not suggesting that a perfect word-to-meaning lexicon will solve the world's problems, but it would certainly make it possible to actually talk.