Words: The social tool

Summary: Words ‘live’ in conversations – in denotations and connotations. Meanings we hold in mind are already generalized, referring not to one but to a class or group of objects.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that is all.”

Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass.

Words mean different things to different people. Language then, is a complicated business, although we might think of it as a simple social tool.

Denote and connote

A large enough stock of words, we feel, should make our talking to others internationally easy. However, how people in different countries learn to speak, understand, or even think a language is far more complex than grammar or ‘dictionary meanings’.

Words ‘live’ in conversations. A word may have a denotation - standing for a person, a place, a thing or an idea. Most words also have connotations - associations, implications and insinuations, associating them with emotions, and feelings that may be judgemental.

For example, the noun ‘pig’ denotes an animal species. But its loaded meanings include dirty, smelly, inquisitive, grossly unpleasant, chauvinism - and cops.

Semantics

Organizational fears are that hints of sexism or discrimination could upset team relations, and productivity. Employers hope to install equality with politically correct language, erasing negative or derogatory words from usage.

But does this correct the mindset? As it happens, meanings we hold in mind are already generalized, the word referring not to one but to a class or group of objects. The mental associations are simply transferred to the replacing words like, for example, idiot-retarded-challenged-differently abled.

With the use of euphemisms, bias and prejudice are no longer visible. But their hold on semantics remains and extends with the (connotative) ‘sense’ moving – from old word to new word.

For diverse workgroups, just keeping up with euphemisms could sometimes make more confusion than sense.

Upbringing

Childhood conversations - Jean Piaget’s “socialized speech” - begin the process of taking in culture. As children grow, they model themselves on parents, teachers and friends - first understanding and then speaking, thinking and acting, just as the others around are seen to do.

People become tied to their background and live life according to the customs, norms, and habits of thought they experience in their upbringing. It makes their world organized. It stabilizes daily life by telling them exactly how to identify things and act on them.

Connotations play a large part in stereotypes - hackneyed conceptions, with perhaps an element of truth and a large dollop of fancy. A stereotype becomes a standard received idea, preserved in our minds.

Cont’d 2…The bridge of meaning