Thinking About Words and Their Meaning

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I'm not sure where this goes, but this is a very mathematical philosophy regarding language and communication.

First things first, words have no meaning, at least on their own. Everything is relative. The meaning of words only exists inside people's heads, and different people have different meanings for the same word in their heads. Now, what the hell are words and meaning anyway? For our purposes we are restricting words to just common nouns as they are one of the least abstract types of words, and for our purposes are the easiest to model. The rest of communication is just an extension and alteration of the theory based around the model for the communication of common nouns. Verbs also operate roughly the same as common nouns, but are a bit more abstract. However, that was not what I was referring to when I asked what the hell words are.

Let's first define meaning in the context of words. What exactly is the meaning of a word, this meaning that varies from person to person? I think a good place to start is by looking at Temple Grandin. She says that when she hears the word door she sees every door she has ever seen. Now, I think this tells us what meaning is, it's everything we know that that word refers to. I think most people are like Temple, only instead of seeing everything they just a single or more general example, more of a rule than it's contents. So, basically, a meaning is a set. It's a set of all the ideas that are a part of the meaning. "Dog" is the collection of all the ideas of something that could be labeled as a "Dog" in someone's mind. Now, going back to Temple and continuing with the idea of sets, for Temple a meaning is an explicit set, while most people think in more abstract implicit sets. For example, for Temple it's {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}, for most people it's {x| x element of N, x <= 6}. Finally, while I could just leave the model of meaning there, the concept of meaning isn't really just a straight set because some specific examples come to mind before others, and these bring in connections with other things, including emotions. This secondary set leads to connotation, which varies more than the basic set does.

These sets are usually more or less the same for most people, but they are usually slight different. For example, most people will agree that this is green. Some people with say that is green, others will say it's blue. Some will even say it's neither, or both. That's because different people have different sets of colors which make up their idea of "Blue" and "Green". These meanings are not constant and change as new information is acquired. For whatever reasons people acquire slightly different meanings to words, even if they mostly the same. Now, with connotation, when some hears red they might think of apples, cherries, and kisses. Another person might think of blood, fire, and anger. Because of this they might have more or less the same set of colors belonging to "Red", but because of this secondary set their connotations of "Red" are completely different, so meaning varies quite a bit more from person to person than one would think.

Now for words. Words are also sets, sets of sounds (for spoken language) and images (for written language). To be more specific, a spoken word is a sequence of phonemes, which are a set of simpler sounds, and a written word is a sequence of graphemes, which are a set of simpler images. Now, if you have ever tried to learn a language with a different set of phonemes you might realize that like the meaning of words the perception of phonemes varies from person to person. A phoneme is not a specific sound, its a range of very similar sounds that we group together and categorize as being a single sound for the purposes of communication. While people who speak the same language have more or less the same perception of phonemes, people who speak different languages have sometimes very different perceptions of phonemes and divide sounds into phonemes much differently. This can be "seen" by the fact that people who are not native speakers of a language have different accents. With written language the concept of accents is best reflected through handwriting/writing style. Now, going specifically with spoken language, what I find really remarkable is how even though there are all these different phonemes, each phoneme is defined by the physical technique used in the mouth and vocal chords to make it, which I guess shows how we learn to mimic sounds, and how well tailored our ideas of the boundaries of phonemes are. The other notable concept is that in themselves phonemes just have the idea that they are a phoneme, they lack meaning like words. The only gain meaning when put together, while none of the individual parts have meaning in themselves. The idea that are particular arrangement or pattern of specific objects can have meaning that can't be found just by adding the parts together is called gestalt, the word is a gestalt made from phonemes. The concept of gestalt is critical for complex communication.

Now that we understand what "meaning" and "words" we can tackle them in the context of communication, and find the most basic cause for miscommunication. It's it's most basic form, communication is when some party has an idea, and causes another party to know of the same idea. Communication starts with an idea, it is converted into transmittable information, which is then received by the other side and converted back into an idea. Looking at just the single original side, the process of communication for our purposes works like this: It starts with an idea. The idea is then converted into a word which for that person has the appropriate meaning. Finally it is converted from a word into a sound, and the first person no longer has control over the communication process. This can be expressed as i -> s(w(i)), where i is an idea, w converts it into a word, and s converts w(i) into a sound. Now, it needs to be kept in mind that w has a wider domain than it's ranger, and s has a wider range than it's domain and isn't a function, so this map is not clean map and it's inverse is not clean either. On the other side, the other party has their own set of maps, S and W, as they have a different perception of the meaning of words and a difference in the interpretation of sounds, though for all our purposes s = S as the difference in interpretation of sounds is for our purposes negligible (though it is important when playing The Broken Telephone Game/Chinese Whispers, and in a more realistic situation when either the two people do not share a common language or when there is hearing or speech impediments). To convert an incoming sound J the inverses must be used, so it's J -> W-1(S-1(J)). This means the resulting message will be interpreted as W-1(S-1(s(w(i))) = I. Even if W = w the result might still be slightly different as the maps aren't clean, like how the square root of x squared will yield -x if x was negative instead of x. However, for our purposes we will consider this aspect to be negligible, at least for the case of sound, so s-1(s(x) = x, and since for our purposes s = S then S-1(s(x)) = x. Therefor, for our purposes the act of communication results in i -> W-1(w(i)). Now, W is mostly the same as w, so the end result will be close to i, but it probably won't be exactly the same. Miscommunication results from when these errors in the communication process have a significant result, i is significantly different from I. These is more likely to happen when the idea goes through multiple people as the small changes accumulate (plus people can purposely change the idea and flow of communication) and can also be seen when a message is translated through languages, especially multiple languages. All these drawing and guessing games show how the process of conversion and error work quite well.

Of course, language involves more than just nouns, so the communication process is a bit more complicated than that. This leaves for even more room for error, especially when additional gestalt is involved beyond words. However, it is still based around the same basic ideas, just expanded to the context of sentences and the like. Basically, miscommunication comes about because people do not find the exact same meaning in things, so error is made during translation. Communication is only even possible because the general meanings are somehow mostly consistant between people, though just as the exact meaning morphs between people the general meaning changes over time, causing linguistic change. Anyway, this relative consistency is the real miracle of communication.

In other words, words mean what the participants in the conversation decide what they mean.

Did I get that right?

ruveyn

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHhYLJMi7CE[/youtube]

words are just words in the end. If you sense something more it is probably better to stay silent about it, acknowledge what is unsaid or cannot be spoken and remember that. Then look at what was said and take that with a grain of salt.

Not only do the same words mean different things to different people, but I saw a news article recently (in the past year) that our brains may see different colors too for the same color. For example, let's say that you and I agree that a particular class of colors should be called "red." Okay, well and good. But it could be that in YOUR mind what you see for that class of colors would be what I call purple. Even though we agree that all the objects emitting light of a particular range of frequencies are the same color, and even if we agree to call it the same name, what you actually see in your mind's eye for that color might be what I would call a different color name to me. If I could see the color you see in your mind for what we both agree to call "red," it might be purple or whatever to me. And of course the color I call purple might be what you would call orange if you could see what I see in my mind for those frequencies of color.

As for the Original Post though and main subject of this thread, I wrote a song about it:
What Can I Say?

Yes, language is an always shifting consensus. Miscommunication is inevitable expecially when there isn't truly a consensus. This currently active thread in the General Forum gives an example that happens a lot on WP:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt221304.html

The term "neurotypical" doesn't have a firm consensus on the meaning. To many people it means "not autistic" but to many other people it means "people who have no condition described in the DSM" or somettimes a subcategory of that, "people who have no neurological condition". To a small but vocal minority of the people using the word it means "people who are not autistic and also hold values I strongly disagree with". There is a lack of consensus on the meaning of the word yet it gets used with considerable frequency here and people are often able to communicate using it by using the sort of contextual translation you describe but sometimes this falls apart because of the lack of consesnsus and then you get threads like the one I linked. I find it all very fascinating.

"Neurotypical" is an example of words that have a fuzzy meaning but with a consensus about the broad category that the word refers to. It's almost as though the word refers to a cluster of things that all have something in common (neurology and how it influences ways of thinking) but there isn't consensus that lets it get more specific yet people use it in highly specific and idiosyncratic ways depending on their personal definition. I picked this word because it comes up on WP so much. An different example of this phenomenon that doesn't come up here but comes up a lot in other places is "queer". It seems to have many iterations and people use it in idiosyncratic ways depending on their personal definition but it seems to refer to a cluster of concepts that have to do with gender and sexuality.

Fascinating stuff. I like your observation about accents. I understand the term "innit" as used by people in the UK but my pronounciation of it would likely be hilarious to UK people and my understanding of its' use is colored by the fact that I rarely hear it but mostly just read it (for example I think Tequila has used it several times). Nevertheless, it's getting translated into my head as having a meaning. The meaning to me is a very informal (and therefore contracted) "isn't it". That's the meaning that gets put into my head when a UK person types it (or I hear it in a movie or TV show). But is it the meaning the person intended to convey? Is my American-ness preventing me from getting the actual meaning even though a concept pops into my head? I'll never know.,

As Jimi Hendrix once sang, "Scuse me while I kiss this guy".

Words are a means of communication that is dependent on those participating in the communication having the same general meaning for the same words - enough similarity that communication can actually take place. That's about the best we can expect from language. It's not perfect for communication because we all approach it from different perspectives, our experiences and our unique thought processes. I think we do pretty well with it.

Ganondox, You might like to read these http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... the-himba/ http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... -sky-blue/. It's about society and language and how they influences our perception of colour. Unfortunately the clip of the Himba tribe has been blocked.

About colors and language, I recall from a linguistics class I took about ten years ago something about the number of different color names recognized by different cultures. Black and white usually if only two had names. I think red came next if they only had separate names for three different colors, and so on. Different cultures might or might not lump green and blue together as one class of colors etc. (or the opposite, e.g., have extra names for what we would call two shades of blue or whatever).

I am reminded of something Alan Watts said in a talk when he mentioned some Chinese philosophy, something like the man who only sees five colors is blind, the man who only hears five tones is deaf, or something like that. I think this was supposed to mean that if your culture only recognizes five colors, and you classify everything according to those five names, you are ignoring the subtleties of all the shades in between and so on. And likewise, if you try to cram all music into just the five notes (or whatever) of the musical scale recognized by your culture, same idea.

And THAT reminds me of a study I read of in Scientific American about twenty years ago. They played the SAME piece of music to people in England and to people in California, and based on the vowel frequencies of their relative accents the different groups of people heard different melodies (the part you would whistle as the "tune") from the same piece of music. They would hear the tones their brains had been conditioned to receive because of the frequencies of the vowel tones in their accent, even though both groups spoke "English."

I'm not as sure about what the study said here but I seem to remember (or imagine!) that it might not just be our brains that are conditioned to certain frequency ranges, but even the "hardware" of our ears or the nerves connecting them to the brain, that these parts of the body might be more adapted to receiving those frequencies of the language of the culture that baby grew up in.

And this reminds me of something similar about the body changing. My late father flew tens of thousands of hours in military transport aircraft over more than three decades of active duty and reserve service including World War II, the Korean conflict, and Viet-nam. Because of all those thousands of hours of engine noise, my dad was deaf in certain frequency ranges where it was like the receivers had been "worn out" by constant overuse. I've also heard that couples married to each other for a long time have those parts of their ears "wear out" that receive the frequencies of the vocal range of their partner. If this is so, it really does become more and more difficult to hear your partner!

As a scientist and a philosopher, I've wondered about meaning and so forth, but as a musician I am very attentive to matters of frequencies. The universe can be thought of as musical in its structure, everyone and everything an interaction of vibrations of various frequencies. My guitar acts like a cosmic knitting needle on the fabric of the cosmos.

Had a supervisor at work -maybe it was him- maybe it was me- but he seemed to have a had a knack for non-comunication. Somehow when he choose a word - it could be remarkably missleading as to wtf he was talking about.Atleast for me.


One time he called me up at home to relay something job related, but before he gave me the message he made the following comment- in a thoughtful somber tone of voice.

He said "it sounds like somebody is bugging you on the phone!"

My question to you readers:

How would you react to that sentence?
What does it SOUND like he is talking about?

Again:

"It sounds like somebody is bugging you on the phone."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


OK.
Some more background.

At our house we kept getting messages on our answering machine from a stranger: a middle aged sounding guy kept leaving LONG messages to his young grown daughter about family news- unaware that he was dialing the wrong number.

So we finnally changed the salutation on our answering machine to address this poor guy to say "If you are the father of so and so- youve been dialing the wrong number" something to that effect.

Finnally my mom picked up the phone- and it WAS the girl's Dad- and that drama got cleared up.

So we changed the message back to what it was before.

But this guy from my job called when we still had that message addressed to the stranger.

But I didnt realize that he heard it-and had no reason to be thinking about that drama.

So when he said "it sounds like someone is bugging you on the phone"- I was stunned and a bit shocked.

What I THOUGHT he was saying was "the sound quality of your telephone is a little bit off- and that that could be a tip-off that somebody is wiretapping your phone."

So I began to wonder if the FBI thought we were terrorists.

So i said something like " OHhh.. well...continue...".

Then he got annoyed, and said ..."well you have that message on your machine".

Then I realized he was just talking about that dumb stuff-about that guy trying to call his daughter-nothing sinister. And the converstation progressed on to work.

But it stuck in my mind.

The guy from work was trying to make small talk- and got frustrated because I didnt respond.

He was using the word "bugging" to mean "bothering".

Somebody is "bothering" you on the phone.

Maybe its because Im old enought to remember Watergate and he wasnt- I dunno- but it seems to me that a person should be aware that if you use the word "bug" in a sentence about "the telephone" that the word "bug" would take on a different meaning to most people- that it would seem to mean "a bug"(a wire tapping device)- and not "bothering".

Maybe its a generational thing.

But it does show how a word can take on different meanings in different contexts-or atleast to different people.

Naturalplastic, I've often used and heard the term 'stop bugging me', meaning 'stop annoying me'. It's a colloquial term that you might not be used to, so it understandable that you might get confused, especially when a phone was being discussed.

But, I know what you mean. I remember a few years ago, we were on holiday, in Italy, and one of the waitresses in our hotel (who was Romanian, just to confuse matters still), slipped on the floor. She's wasn't hurt, but was a little shaken. My Mum said to her, 'I think you've just gotten a fright'. The girl, who had very good English was adamant that she wasn't frightened by anything. We were trying to think of other ways to word it, so she understood that we knew she wasn't physically hurt, she had just been surprised at what had happened. So, we used the words 'shock' and 'surprise' and a few others, but nothing equated to how she was feeling. Maybe it's just the way we Scots speak and there wasn't really any other way of explaining what my Mum had meant.

So what does "normal" mean when talking about a person? What does "average" mean when talking about a persons physical features?

Re: the George Carlin video

Thats one of the diagnostic signs of being an aspie: that you need to have it explained to you exactly "where" to "stick it!".