Linguistics and semantics

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How much of our problems come from the failure of language to properly convey one person's feelings and ideas?

It's something that came to me recently with this thread. Well, moreso last night for some odd reason (one of those random epiphanies). What if the problem is understanding that even with sharing a language, it may not express the same ideas in the same ways to people?

It's more of a problem with people having opposing thoughts on some matter and not really attempting to listen. Usually, they'll nitpick a few keywords and then go about bashing and mocking things which they think their debate opponent might value and attempt to associate them with far worse things in their minds while they are preparing their next volley of venom to hurl along with the elephants.

One reply in and language has already failed us.

I'll never forget that one passage from a Vonnegut book (I think it was Breakfast of Champions) where Vonnegut (through Kilgore Trout) talks about how there's a race of extraterrestrials who communicate telepathically. However, this is very inefficient as a collage of thoughts irrelevant to the task at hand is communicated.

The extraterrestrials meet humans and are fascinated with English or language in general as it allows a singleness of intent to be conveyed that would otherwise be drowned out in a collage of thoughts.

The moral of the story is that the directness of language comes at a price of some ambigiouity of contexts around the edges.

Maybe it's more of a problem of imanoparakeet not listening to your real complaint rather than a structural linguistic problem.

I could reply more along with your post, but if I were to say the same things as you then I might as well copy and paste. Really though, not everyone shares the same thoughts and feelings. You can express yours all you like, but people have their own too.

It's very dangerous to underestimate the structural constraints that language imposes.

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 22 Jun 2010, 11:16 am, edited 2 times in total.

As much as people do not share the same vocabulary or grammar.



In that thread, you asked a question that appears to be about the video but you didn't provide context as to which part of the video and as such it only appeared that you were asking a question without context. That could be a linguistic problem, but not that language failed you but that you didn't use language properly.



Is the problem supposed to be "understanding that even with sharing a language, it may not express the same ideas in the same ways to people?" or rather "that even with sharing a language, it may not express the same ideas in the same ways to people?"? People have a difficult time in reading comprehension when people have errata in their composition.

MP is a little more on point with the topic.

And also, this is what I get for not making sure to write down when I have the idea (but it was 1am and I already needed to go to sleep).

'Keet, I'm not expressing that we should all believe the same thing...but rather that maybe language isn't broad enough to be able to express the intricacies of ideas well enough to be able to put across points without being as intrusive. People will always have different ideas about how to live life and I think that they should be able to pursue that and not keep others from pursuing how they want to live their lives...but again, not the point here. Mine is more the lack of connection between people and how, sometimes, to really understand people it takes so much more context than words can currently convey.

Do you mean to say,

"It's very dangerous to underestimate the structural constraints language imposes."

or

"It's very dangerous to underestimate structural constraints imposed by language ."

or

"It's very dangerous to underestimate language structure constraints."

My failing of not explaining that enough:

What I mean was the concept that Nagel put forward that one couldn't understand what it's like to be even a simple creature like a bat rather less to understand what it's like to be another human and all the contextual differences in how one has experienced everything growing up leading up to what they are.

And I find some languages do a better job of expression than others. Yiddish is probably one of the best and is probably that way because of its incorporation of so many different languages into its structure.

Well, of course. Think about it: our understanding of language is both influenced by our unique neurological structure AND the unique contexts shaping our exposure to each term and structure and whatever, including the learning of them.

I mean, it is no surprise that we can understand each other, and it is no surprise that we misunderstand each other as well. Each term is only conveyed to us by other terms, which is only conveyed by even more terms, and understanding is a matter of theorizing and checking the theory for its truth rather than some direct "mind-link" that words express.

Now, iamnotaparakeet shows the failure AND represents it. To him, what you said brings up a different issue because it is pressing on his mind and relatively important to him. He does not see what you are talking about because other things are more relevant, and perhaps even because this kind of issue isn't as big in his philosophy on reality. iamnotaparakeet probably identifies most with a "modernist" analytic philosophy with enlightenment characteristics(such as about the universality of rationality and the ability of all minds to find truth, hopefully someone sees what bit of truth I get at with my expression). Getting skafather's point requires either an evolutionary or postmodern bent to get at it. (M_P referenced the postmodern author Vonnegut, and I started expressing both the hermeneutic circle and a vaguely Popperian idea of theorizing and checking)

I think Master_Pedant's Vonnegut moral fails as well. Are computer languages direct? Sure. Now, they may be complex, but formal languages can convey a lot of information, as seen in mathematics and computer science. They are also very unambiguous, as anything only has one meaning. The big issue is that there is no way something so complex could ever really emerge in a human species without directly programming it in. Reality is immensely complex, and so compressing the necessary information such that communication would be reasonable is effectively impossible, so the solution of our species is contextualization and contextualization will tend to involve ambiguity as context is decided by a lot of factors that individuals do not share.

I'm not so sure I agree. I think he was approaching a separate issue and merely saw what he wanted to see and reacted how he was expecting to have to react to a topic made by me. It wasn't a case of him not understanding the words but more so just not seeing them. The same phenomena happens with the conspiracy theorists who hear exactly what they want to hear out of some quote rather than what is actually said, even with context provided. A prime example of that would be the "reporter catches bush off guard with a question on if 9/11 was an inside job" or whatever the title was. It has little to do with the language and more to do with a primed response regardless of the words.

What I'm more looking to explore is the concept that even with hearing the words and understanding it, the message and the ideas may very well still be lost as to their depth and meaning due to the lack of nuances in language and the general clumsy nature that we approach language.

I don't think the problem is entirely with the language itself, but always with how we acquire the language. The problem is that our understanding of the various terms in a language is only possible given our idiosyncratic experiences and the relation of those terms to other terms and the idiosyncratic experiences that inspired them. The whole "semantic holism" problem - words can't be analyzed in isolation.

Well, right, it is a primed response. The issue is that priming is central to misunderstanding of issues as well, in particular, the different primings people have for specific words. Now, iamnotaparakeet is an egregious example of this kind of thing, to the point where it is understandable that you would push for this to be a different phenomenon, but, I think the issue is really quite similar on some levels. It is still an issue of theorizing an approach, and then acting upon this theory, and this theory being very wrong; iamnotaparakeet's brain is just more broken than most.


I think I am approaching this issue to a good extent.

I agree with M_P's invocation of semantic holism. The issue is one of learning. I still think the issue is a limitation of our language based upon how context can replace the need for pre-existing universal patterns having to be uploaded into a mind.