Personal Development for Smart People Forums - View Single Post - What's the point in discussing a word's definition?

Magicinthenight · 02-11-2010, 06:03 PM

I love this thread. But then I love Derrida and his take on deconstructing the text.

Who was it that said that language is a constant process of contract making? That in order to communicate, we continually assume the people partaking in the discussion are acting under the same contract as we are. That we assume that the words we speak are understood under that contract ie. the way we intend them to be understood.

Yet this is something that is VERY difficult to achieve. People always have their OWN meaning for words. I say dog and someone immediately thinks:labrador, another one thinks of a German Shepherd AND to top that all of, they immediately categorise that word into something in their head: if they've had good experiences with dogs the category might be more pleasant than if they've had bad experiences with dogs. So even a simple word can have loaded meaning to a person. And yet we still speak and write under the assumption everyone shares the same concept of a word. Lunacy, eh.

But, also, I think that if we were to spend all our times conveying the meaning we attach to words we'd get nothing done. Therefore we have to make assumptions, we have to gloss over disrepancies in our daily lives. We have to act on the assumption that we are all more or less talking about the same thing when we say the word dog.

It's when people have very different meaning for words that we can have huge arguments that will lead to nothing else but highlighting that yes, these individuals see these clusters of letters as different things. Can be a great debate and the end result may be that the individuals in question will realise they're just both acting on the basis of their own assumptions. Or they can just both decide that the other person's meaning is "wrong" and theirs is "right".

Anyway, cool stuff. Oh and I'd recommend Derrida's essay Structure, Sign and Play for anyone interested in the concept of deconstructing. It's a lot of FUN.

ETA: Just realised how old this thread was! Well, the subject matter is still interesting.

02-11-2010, 06:03 PM	#13 (permalink)
Magicinthenight Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 391	I love this thread. But then I love Derrida and his take on deconstructing the text. Who was it that said that language is a constant process of contract making? That in order to communicate, we continually assume the people partaking in the discussion are acting under the same contract as we are. That we assume that the words we speak are understood under that contract ie. the way we intend them to be understood. Yet this is something that is VERY difficult to achieve. People always have their OWN meaning for words. I say dog and someone immediately thinks:labrador, another one thinks of a German Shepherd AND to top that all of, they immediately categorise that word into something in their head: if they've had good experiences with dogs the category might be more pleasant than if they've had bad experiences with dogs. So even a simple word can have loaded meaning to a person. And yet we still speak and write under the assumption everyone shares the same concept of a word. Lunacy, eh. But, also, I think that if we were to spend all our times conveying the meaning we attach to words we'd get nothing done. Therefore we have to make assumptions, we have to gloss over disrepancies in our daily lives. We have to act on the assumption that we are all more or less talking about the same thing when we say the word dog. It's when people have very different meaning for words that we can have huge arguments that will lead to nothing else but highlighting that yes, these individuals see these clusters of letters as different things. Can be a great debate and the end result may be that the individuals in question will realise they're just both acting on the basis of their own assumptions. Or they can just both decide that the other person's meaning is "wrong" and theirs is "right". Anyway, cool stuff. Oh and I'd recommend Derrida's essay Structure, Sign and Play for anyone interested in the concept of deconstructing. It's a lot of FUN. ETA: Just realised how old this thread was! Well, the subject matter is still interesting. Last edited by Magicinthenight; 02-11-2010 at 06:31 PM.