Recently, the last of my Taiwan essays published in the Yale Logos. It’s been a while since I’ve revisited this piece which I wrote for the Veritas Institute last year, but the fundamental question that led me to write the piece is still swirling around in my mind.
Writing and speaking relies on language and words to communicate our ideas, but we don’t always really know what we’re saying. As Renee Edwards, professor of interpersonal communication at Louisiana State University, told me, “We speak in generalities.”
“Words come with baggage. We all have different cultural and personal experiences which influence the way we perceive and experience words. When it comes to certain words, like names, this is clear–even when we compare with our past selves. The pet name that only your ex used to call you likely elicits different emotions now than it did back when you were in that relationship.
Some semantic differences are benign and easily resolved. If in the middle of a conversation, I find out that your perception of the word “interview” leads you to believe that I’m going to answer questions to try to get a job instead of asking someone else questions in the name of journalism, I can say so, and we can laugh it off.
But what about the words we assume do mean the same things in context?
We don’t see the same colors, as evidenced in 2015 when the internet could not agree if the now infamous dress was white and gold or blue and black. For me, and 2-5% of the population with aphantasia, “metaphors” do not evoke images. In schools, students have vastly different ideas of what it means to be “broke” or “failing” which depend on baselines established by their backgrounds.
There are situations in which having different definitions and not realizing it can cause significant conflict and even social problems. When this happens between patients and doctors, it can lead to misdiagnosis or the patient not feeling understood and not adhering to treatment. In the last year, Americans have been wrestling with questions that involve, among other things, racism, safety, and acceptable risks. When we come to the table with different definitions of key terms, we can talk endlessly around issues and never agree on the heart of the problem, or more importantly, never do anything about them.
When asked, people can cobble together a cloud of meaning in the form of associations for words like “science” or “equality” or “freedom.” But the definitions they give are not necessarily the premises they’re operating off of. Which means, even if you ask, you might not get to the root of the problem”
~“Why We Don’t Say What We Mean” read the rest at Yale Logos
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