Entry 361 — Attitudes toward the Language
The imbecile wants words to be meaningless so that everyone else will be as incapable of achieving understanding as he is.
The philogusher (lover of gush) wants words to mean just about anything so he can babble away to his heart’s content on any subject without worrying that others will try to get him to make sense.
The propagandist wants words to be ill-defined, if defined at all, so he can more readily use them to persuade people to do his bidding, by campaigning for political office in part by advocating support for “freedom of speech,” for instance, but meaning “freedom to say what is permitted.”
The aesthlinguist wants words to be defined by the masses because of his love for the beautifully polysemic confusion engendered by the language which the passive surrender of the definitional process to those least capable of making it an effective aid in the search for large understandings results in.
The verosopher wants words to be defined with maximal-accuracy (recognizing that they can’t be defined perfectly) so as to facilitate the discovery and communication of increasingly valid understandings of existence.
Four kinds of nullinguists, one kind of verosolinguist.
Usually, I resist responding to such notes, but my interest in linguistics has forced one short note. First, there are no definable beings as imbeciles and philogushers, no-one who would want such things. This is merely an act of making up enemies (nullinguists, in this case). Second, I don’t think propagandists benefit by words being ill-defined, though they might define them for their own purposes, but there’s nothing particular to propagandists in this case. Note, for instance, your definition of “visual poetry” for your own purposes. Third, there’s no such person as an aesthlinguist as defined here, a person who actively surrenders definition to the least equipped. Fourth, you are the the verosopher, not sure there are others.
My take on meaning is that it will change over time and that many words and terms will have multiple meaning and that there is no way to stop that and no particular benefit. You currently use at least hundreds of words today in ways significantly different than you did when you were ten, and that’s because the language will change. There’s no stopping it. Even technical jargon, which you’re most concerned with, will change. And even technical jargon is based on human agreement of meaning, rather than one person stating some meaning.
Finally, do not forget that I have no single definition for “visual poetry.” I have identified four different definitions in use. Your preferred use is one of those, but it is not my preferred use, and that is because my preferred use, my preferred sense of the word, is the most common sense.
I’m really just being a linguist here. No idea what a versolinguist is, but it sounds like the reverse.
Geof
Only one comment back at you, Geof: of course, I define “visual poetry” for “my own purposes.” Everything any human being does is for his own purposes. But I am nothing like a propagandist, as I describe one above. I want words to be clearly defined, each in such a way as to differentiate what it defines from everything it isn’t as sharply as possible, like your quadruple definition of visual poetry does not. The purpose of a propagandist with regard to the use of words, as my description of his attitude toward the language should make clear, is completely unlike mine. His is to use words to further some activity other than the search for truth; my purpose, as a verosopher, is exclusively to use words as best I can in the search for truth. Which often means opposing their irresponsible pollution by the masses, and by nullinguists.
Yes, smoke coming out both my ears, but I shall not quit the field!
–Bob