More Words

I was given a book recently by my brother-in-law. I intend on reading it very carefully because I'm not familiar with the subject matter. However, I'm out of practice. So I'm going through a book that I read for Hermeneutics class, back in 1991. It's called, "How to Read a Book". I'm reminded of the value of understanding the meaning of the words used. Adler calls it "coming to terms", but really it is the reader's investigation into the author's words and phrases to determine their meanings and how they are used to convey information. This would be done only for the important terms (to save time).

Given my interest in words, I was pleased to reread some very insightful stuff from Adler:

... a word can have many meanings, especially an important word. If the author uses a word in one meaning, and reader reads it in another, words have passed between them, but they have not come to terms. Where there is unresolved ambiguity in communication, there is no communication, or at best communication must be incomplete. p.96

Though Humpty Dumpty would not approve, we can see this as very sensical. If our goal is clear communication.

When an author writes something down, it is up to the reader to make sense of it. This is work. However, this work will be especially difficult if the author has not been careful with her words. This laxity would make the reader's work nearly impossible. But with the assumption of the good faith and effort of the author, the burden of understanding falls on the reader - to figure out the meanings of the words and use those meanings when reading.

If I ever become a writer - maybe I should take up blogging, less time consuming - I want to give my readers clues to what my important words and phrases mean.

Anyway, on with the book...

Words from the US Government

I used to believe what the government and its leaders said much more than I do now. Growing up, it almost seemed to me like respect and trust of the government was akin to that of God or holy people.

That said, a kerfuffle is brewing on the Korean peninsula. This latest round was (seemingly) started by North Korea by sinking a South Korean military boat. Many people died. The war of words have started.

Hilary Clinton, US Secretary of State, has gone into the breech to help. This article, from Yahoo, relates some of what she has said:

Clinton said the two sides share the objective of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. "Now we must work together again to address the serious challenge provoked by the sinking of the South Korean ship."

To me that sounds like a bunch of nonsense. The North wants nothing of the sort. Yet, she must say it to promote peaceful relations and hopefully successful negotiations. She is a diplomat with more responsibility than to simply tell-it-like-it-is. Maybe she is saying this in the hopes that the North will adopt this attitude. Maybe the North will go along with that charade and bloviate and threaten with demands in the hopes for peace (wink at Clinton) - as that is their negotiation style.

I don't know what is best here. I do understand that language from the government is not always what it seems.

(Afterthought) I guess that, technically speaking, North Korea, does want peace and stability on the peninsula . . . the same kind of peace that ancient Rome wanted with the known world.

Words

Words mean something. Words mean something specific. They point to concrete ideas beyond themselves. Sometimes the words are misunderstood and the ideas are miscommunicated by the hearer/reader, but that does not nullify the original words pointing to the original concrete ideas.

"He kicked a ball" is fairly simple to understand. It is straight-forward. "He kicked a tire", while straight-forward, conveys more meaning - probably involving shopping for a car. "He kicked a dead horse" is not straight-forward at all. It means something about futile attempts to get something to move or work. Language that is not straight-forward is not trying to be misleading, it is simply using a language mechanism to convey an idea - a language mechanism that ought to be familiar to the readers. Story, analogy, idioms, figures of speech, and etc are meant to be understood properly. Sometimes that requires study. Often it requires humility.

Many times, the battle for the Bible is about language - what words mean or meant. So often, I see 2 kinds of errors that people take to the Bible, and I hang my head.

1. Some people want the Bible to be understood literally in all but the most obvious cases. It makes interpretation easy for the non-scholarly. It makes life more black and white - something that seems to strangely bring comfort to them.

2. Some people want the Bible to be understood however the reader wants to understand it. The reader can simply use the words on the page to convey the ideas the reader wants. These people think that words/language have no inherent meaning and that the only real meaning is the meaning that the reader brings to the words. (How then could words teach them something new - or challenge them to live differently?)

The battle over words and how they are to be understood has long intrigued me. Lewis Carol's musings have given me insight:

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

While I agree technically with Mr. Dumpty, it is not helpful to say the word "Pancake" when one really means "iceberg". The source has to be trusted to put ideas into words that have generally understood and specific meanings. If the source is deceitful or otherwise untrustworthy, don't bother. But if the source is trustworthy, then we do the writer justice by working (hard) to understand the ideas conveyed through the words.

(image grabbed from todayscatholicworld.com)