4
Language
The problem of meaning Since much of our knowledge comes to us in the form of language, we need to be clear about the meanings of words if we are to understand the information that is being communicated to us.
LQ – Reason: How many arguments turn out to be about the meaning of words?
ACTIVITY 4.5 Read the following passage, attributed to Judy Lanier, which is called ‘The Montillation of Traxoline’, and answer the questions below. ‘It is very important that you learn about traxoline. Traxoline is a new form of zionter. It is montilled in Ceristanna. The Ceristannians gristeriate large amounts of fevon and then bracter it into quasel traxoline. Traxoline may well be one of our most lukized snezlaus in the future because of our zionter lescelidge.’ 1. What is traxoline? 2. Where is traxoline montilled? 3. How is traxoline quaselled? 4. Why is it important to know about traxoline?
You probably had no difficulty in answering the above questions – traxoline is a new form of zionter, it is montilled in Ceristanna, and so on. However, you have not really learned anything from this passage because you have no idea what words such as ‘montillation’ and ‘traxoline’ mean. (In fact, they don’t mean anything!) The above example shows that if you do not know what the key words in a passage mean you will not understand it. This raises the question of what it is to know the meaning of a word. Meaning is important in our search for knowledge because you must know what a sentence means before you can decide whether it is true or false. You can repeat parrot-fashion that traxoline is montilled in Ceristanna, but if you do not know what ‘traxoline’ and ‘Ceristanna’ refer to, you will have no idea whether the statement is true or false. RLS – Headline: ‘Last speaker of ancient language of Bo dies in India’. What knowledge, if any, is lost when a language becomes extinct?
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We tend to assume that pinning down meaning is a relatively straightforward business, and that every word has a fixed meaning that is understood and accepted by everyone. While life might be easier if this were true, we could argue that there is a problem of meaning and that words are often ambiguous and open to a variety of interpretations.
Theories of meaning We will briefly look at three theories of what distinguishes meaningful words from meaningless ones. The first theory says that meanings are to be found in dictionaries, the second that they are found in the world, and the third that they are found in the mind.