Sunday, October 2, 2011

Words, Words, Words

I thought Locke's discussion of the way in which humans learn words affects how we understand them was particularly interesting. He states that to learn the word for tangible objects, "people ordinarily show [a child/baby/learner] the thing whereof they would have them have the idea" (819). That is, the object comes before the idea of the object, because without words there is no idea. If a baby sees a lamp but does not have any language with which to identify the lamp, he cannot form an idea of what its purpose is or where it fits in his world. Thus, while words reflect ideas, they are also a basis of ideas because ideas cannot be communicated without the use of words.

Locke goes on to discuss "moral words," for which "the sounds are usually learned first" (819). For words that do not refer to objects, that are more abstract, it is easier for the sound to come before the idea because the idea is too complex to be demonstrated in a single action. Words like righteousness, anger, and love, for example, take a lifetime of experience to really define, and each person's definition is different depending on his own experience. This is why the "names of mixed modes" are so "uncertain...even in the mouths of those who had the intention and the faculty of speaking as clearly as language was capable to express their thoughts" (820). It is the complexity of the ideas behind the language that leads to this uncertainty. It is almost as though the fact that there is one word for these "mixed modes" counteracts the desire to make language clear, because it leads to a belief that there might be one definition even though there are many subjective definitions for some words.

1 comment:

  1. When reading your post, the question of "which came first, the chicken or the egg" definitely came to my mind. I certainly don't disagree with the baby and the lamp example here, but I wonder if a set language is what helps the baby understand what a lamp is. The word "lamp" really means nothing: just a string of letters placed together to form what we know as "that thing you put a light bulb in to create light." So the baby may understand the concept of what the lamp does, without knowing it's what we call a lamp. Is language what gives things power, or does language limit things to merely what we tell them they can be?

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