The Importance of Wurds, part 1
May 10th 2007 01:37
Yeah, it's a cheap gag. And sorry to my regular readers that I have been amazingly slack with updating. The truth is that life gets in the way of just about every ambition I attempt.
Words are an interesting theory. They are used for communication, but rarely stick to that one field. In truth they are used to shape thoughts, emotions and at the end of the day, reality itself. Stephen King wrote that words are at the same time great because they help put a limit on things and therefore give them a shape. He also said that that was a terrile thing about them because there are things that shouldn't be shaped or limited. And both these things are true. I might know what happiness is but I couldn't tell people that I am happy unless I had a word for it.
But the crux of this post isn't just a few nice things about the sounds that come out of our mouths. It's about words and meanings. Words have power. Like I said, they are able to shape reality itself (at least, they can shape our perspective of reality, which is in itself a form of reality) and because of this a certain amount of caution should be exercised when using them. Far too much lazy thinking is born of lazy language. And lazy thinking often leads to good in bad context word and action. The word gay for example used to mean simply happy. Now it means something else. I'm not going to bash anyone, but that was the most dramatic change I could think of. The point however, does stand. When the meaning of a word is changed, things change with it. Reality tends to shift and change to keep up.
What is perhaps the worst abuse of this is when a large word is used in a context too small to support it. The US UN representative telling the UN Security Council to "get relevant" about the invasion of Iraq was a great abuse of a great word. Relevance and revelation are hand in hand. What he wanted was the UN to say okay, we agree. What he did was say that by not agreeing, they were not well informed, not thinking and not useful. Which, as we've seen with the benefit of hindsight, was not true.
But politics isn't the subject of this post. The words that we use between ourselves have power to build or destroy people. The old nursery myth of sticks and stones is known to be false by every child that has heard it. Words do hurt, which is why people ought be careful with them. In our day and age, words are used more than ever before. The internet has been largely responsible for this, as was Gutenburg's press hundreds of years ago. Moving type meant moving ideas, and now they move at the speed of electricity. Forums, chat rooms, instant messaging, VOIP technology are all supporters of the transmission of words from one place to another.
They are conduits of power for those with words to use.
JZ
p.s. alot of what I write is only in part because I want to break things down, give enough of an idea for it to be digested.
Words are an interesting theory. They are used for communication, but rarely stick to that one field. In truth they are used to shape thoughts, emotions and at the end of the day, reality itself. Stephen King wrote that words are at the same time great because they help put a limit on things and therefore give them a shape. He also said that that was a terrile thing about them because there are things that shouldn't be shaped or limited. And both these things are true. I might know what happiness is but I couldn't tell people that I am happy unless I had a word for it.
But the crux of this post isn't just a few nice things about the sounds that come out of our mouths. It's about words and meanings. Words have power. Like I said, they are able to shape reality itself (at least, they can shape our perspective of reality, which is in itself a form of reality) and because of this a certain amount of caution should be exercised when using them. Far too much lazy thinking is born of lazy language. And lazy thinking often leads to good in bad context word and action. The word gay for example used to mean simply happy. Now it means something else. I'm not going to bash anyone, but that was the most dramatic change I could think of. The point however, does stand. When the meaning of a word is changed, things change with it. Reality tends to shift and change to keep up.
What is perhaps the worst abuse of this is when a large word is used in a context too small to support it. The US UN representative telling the UN Security Council to "get relevant" about the invasion of Iraq was a great abuse of a great word. Relevance and revelation are hand in hand. What he wanted was the UN to say okay, we agree. What he did was say that by not agreeing, they were not well informed, not thinking and not useful. Which, as we've seen with the benefit of hindsight, was not true.
But politics isn't the subject of this post. The words that we use between ourselves have power to build or destroy people. The old nursery myth of sticks and stones is known to be false by every child that has heard it. Words do hurt, which is why people ought be careful with them. In our day and age, words are used more than ever before. The internet has been largely responsible for this, as was Gutenburg's press hundreds of years ago. Moving type meant moving ideas, and now they move at the speed of electricity. Forums, chat rooms, instant messaging, VOIP technology are all supporters of the transmission of words from one place to another.
They are conduits of power for those with words to use.
JZ
p.s. alot of what I write is only in part because I want to break things down, give enough of an idea for it to be digested.
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Comment by Winston
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
Because of the immense number of languages in the world, along with the disparate nature of social experiences around the globe, it is sometimes very difficult to convey the absolute meaning of a cultural concept to someone from outside that culture. The way we think is defined by the language in which we do so. I think that's part of the reason why Japanese-to-English translations tend to be so head-scratchingly funny: the whole thought-process is different, and doesn't translate smoothly from one culture to the other (words to adequately express the concepts are simply lacking or, at best, approximate).
Another aspect of this is the way in which words can be used to shape or control ideas, even within a culture. Orwell makes great use of this concept in 1984, as well as in this essay. If you've already read it, I apologize. If not, I think you'll like it.
Comment by Anonymous
sorry for taking so long to get to you.
Words are funny buggers. Orwell was right when he said that the words that we use dictate the thoughts that we have.
JZ