Loaded Words

Chapter 5's section "Words with Built-in Judgments" was especially thought-provoking to me. Words only acquire attached affective connotation if people use it with those attached feelings. I noticed that specific definitions in dictionaries have the words "usually offensive" included or something similar. And since dictionaries only record how words are used, it follows that certain words must have been used offensively. However, prior to that, earlier editions of dictionaries would not have included "usually offensive" or "sometimes vulgar", because there was a time when it only had an informative connotation -- at one point, "ass" was only used to refer to donkeys.

The manner in which words obtain built-in judgment is a two way street. The way people inflict words with negative connotation or positive connotation is received negatively or positively. When a word is used frequently enough with a specific meaning, eventually its definition in the dictionary will be recorded as such. But afterward, conflict often ensues as one person intends only to use the word with its informative connotation but another person receives it with its affective connotation. At that point, those words don't even have a distinction between its informative and its affective connotation, both are integrated too closely together to use one without the other. Examples of these words include swear words that were once completely innocent (a**, b*tch) and words describing race that are replaced by other words to describe the same race.

Hayakawa's example in Language in Thought and Action shows that the word "Negro" was replaced by "colored," "nigger," "nigrah," and later "black." But then "African-American" was substituted for "black." This progression demonstrates how people used different words to describe the same thing, and then how people received it. If society had never used the n-word negatively, and in turn had never received it negatively, there would be no cause to think of a new word.

-- tori lee

Stereotypes: Good or Bad?

Many people deliberate over whether stereotypes are good or bad for society.

Stereotypes can induce negative feelings from people towards a certain group, but the true intention for stereotyping is to generalize about (abstract) any group.

On page eighty-six, Hayakawa claims that abstracting is "an indispensable convenience." This is absolutely correct, and is the reason why people have stereotyped different groups of people, animals, etc. By stereotyping, people are simplifying in order to make life a little less complicated.

For instance, the association of Africa with HIV/AIDS stereotype has formed because over sixty percent of the sub-Saharan African population alone is infected with HIV. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_pandemic#Sub-Saharan_Africa) People disagree with this stereotype because not every single African is infected with HIV. Though not every African has HIV, a majority of the African population is indeed infected with it, and that is the reason the stereotype was developed.

Stereotypes aren't always meant to be insulting to a group; they serve to generalize. People must understand that there are always exceptions when dealing with stereotypes.

-Chloe Martianou

Unconscious Assumptions About Language

I think that one of the more interesting concepts brought up in the book is that we tend to make unconscious assumptions about words. I feel that this can be best observed when the idea of naming comes up. For example, one of my aunts is a teacher. When she tried to come up with a name for her son, she spent months mulling it over to no avail. Her difficulty was that she couldn't think of a name without conjuring up the memory of a former student with the same name. Though she did eventually decide on a name, at the time I couldn't understand the difficulty she had with the process. After reading Hayakawa's thoughts on the subject, I was finally able to understand where she was coming from.



The question I have about the whole concept is whether or not it is possible to refrain from these unconscious associations. My personal feeling is that it is near to impossible to fully disassociate. No matter how illogical it is, it's immensely difficult to separate our memories and feelings from the words that we use and hear. What does everyone else think?



- Tara Burns

The Difference Between Human Emotions and Behaviors

Bryce's post, titled One's Semantic Environment, inspired me to differentiate between human emotions and behaviors. The difference between such seemingly similar entities is that language can control behavior, but not emotions.

A good example for differentiating the two is a fixed set of laws in a community. Let's say a woman was pulled over for littering. The policeman fined her for breaking the law, and she obeyed by paying the fine. This fixed law illustrates language controlling people's behavior. (The woman will probably avoid littering in the future).

This particular law, however, does not have any control over the woman's emotions. Although the woman was obligated to pay the fine, she was not coerced to repress her feelings on the matter. The woman therefore could've expressed her emotions--which would most likely be anger and/or humiliation after receiving the fine--through verbal, mental, or physical performance.

Language can act as a regulator of human behaviors, but cannot control human emotions, whether the emotions are expressed externally or not.

-Chloe Martianou

One's Semantic Environment

On page 11 Hayakawa states that language constitutes "the moral and intellectual atmosphere in which [one] lives." Simply put, the words one speaks shape their ideas, hopes, dreams, prejudices, etc. Hayakawa also brings up the point that speakers of separate languages may have separate thoughts or methods of thinking. This left me to question just how profoundly language affects one's thoughts and actions. Are differences in culture directly attributable to differences in the languages societies speak? Or are upbringing, heritage, geographical separation, and other factors a more powerful force? Surely, both have a huge role in shaping who people are. But how powerful is languages role?

When I read Hayakawa's points, the first thing I thought about was "newspeak" from George Orwell's 1984 (http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/). The very purpose of this language was the restrict the thoughts of people by reducing the amount of words available with which to express feeling. For example, if a child grows up speaking a language with no word for happiness (and no word even remotely connected to happiness), then that child is not able to feel happiness, right? Surely, he won't be able to express it.

Overall, the point of language/words influencing thought was interesting to me. My final question, though, is just how powerful can language become? Is something like "newspeak" possible? Or is human nature too powerful to be controlled by a dictionary with a limited vocabulary? Thoughts? Ideas?

-Bryce Cody

Inferences and Judgments

I found it interesting that Hayakawa stresses the positive side of inferences, and doesn't mention the negative. I think we have all read a book or seen a corny movie in which a character draws an incorrect inference creating a conflict between characters. This doesn't just happen in movies. For example, from one mean word we may infer someone is mean, when really she just had a bad day, and we lose out on a friend. That's not a great example, but things similar to that happen. While I think what Hayakawa says about inferences is their more common and important use, they also have a negative side.

Hayakawa mentions the result of judgments on individuals, but I think they also permeate society. A judgment has to start with either one person, or one small group and then gossip carries it to everyone else. People easily accept judgments the same way they accept reports. These judgments usually aren't good, and a lot of time are prejudices against another group. Because judgments stop thought, the prejudices are very hard to get rid of. Once formed, the majority will only see evidence to support the prejudice, with only a select few who can look beyond it. Judgments, especially ones we feel passionate about, spread easily from person to person, and even generation to generation. Children easily accept the prejudices of their parents and never look to correct them, accepting the prejudice as fact. Prejudice is very bad for society. It leads to oppression, violence, and general ignorance. By being aware of judgments as we hear them, and recognizing judgments for what they are and not as facts, we can stop prejudices from forming or spreading. However, getting the majority to do this is incredibly difficult. Anyway, so those were my thoughts on judgments.

~ Becca LaRosa

Symbols Designed to Impress

Whenever someone goes to a concert, he or she usually purchases a concert T-shirt as a commemoration of the event. There is an underlying reason, however, for purchasing such an item: to impress other people.

I remember my sister wore an Aerosmith concert T-shirt to the mall one day. I noticed people ogling her shirt until one woman approached her and said, "Wow, you are so lucky to have gone to an Aerosmith concert!"

Jewelry and sartorial attire are impressive symbols that have signified affluence for centuries. (It is safe to say that such elegant garments worn today do not represent one's social status anymore. They are primarily used to impress people nowadays). Souvenirs from different vacation spots--magnets, postcards, bracelets, necklaces, etc.-- are purchased not only to preserve memories, but also to reveal to others that someone has traveled abroad.

To conclude, one of the roles of symbols is to arouse admiration from others. People enjoy being flattered.

-Chloe Martianou

Dynamic Language

An interesting quote: "The writing of a dictionary, therefore, is not a task of setting up authoritative statements about the true meanings of words, but a task of recording, to the best of one's ability, what various words have meant to authors in the distant or immediate past."-pg. 34

The fact that language is constantly changing is an interesting concept which I feel gives each generation a sense of individuality. This past week I visited my 91 year old grandmother in Seattle, and as I talked to her, she mentioned the "kind negro woman" who cared for her. My first response when she said this was to become very uncomfortable, since we were sitting in a room with many people. It turned out that my grandma had been saying this to almost everyone she talked to, even directly to the African-American woman who cared for her. Noone minded because everyone understood that my grandma was not aware that it was now a socially unacceptable word to say. Like many other words, this word has changed in meaning, taking on a negative connotation and becoming an inappropriate word to say in everyday use.

After this experience, I began thinking about other words that have changed. For me, the most obvious changes were new words. As a religious viewer of "The Colbert Report", I immediately thought of the word "truthiness" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/06words.htm). The other words I immediately thought of (I shamefully admit) were the myriad of terms created in the last ten years by online gaming ("noob", "pwn", "plox", to name a few). Many of these terms are specific to a younger generation which often leads to misunderstanding or confusion between people of different age groups (like what happened between me and my grandmother).

Ultimately, Hayakawa is stating that writing a "master dictionary" which perfectly defines every word and suits every person is impossible. Therefore, Websters and others are left with the job of defining words in a way that suits the largest group of people and addresses the various meanings a word has adopted over the years.

-Bryce Cody

Varying Associations

One thing I noticed about the feelings we associate with words is that they don't seem to be concrete. Hayakawa brings this in chapter five, saying, "The meaning of words also changes from speaker to speaker, from hearer to hearer, and from decade to decade."
I got thinking about this and realized that in some cases, we are so sure about what we think a words means that we don't remember what it started out meaning. This is particularly apparent in words that use to be harmless in meaning but now are considered derogatory or taboo. As an example, the word that use to simply mean 'female dog' is used as an insult. However, this word is still used by dog breeders and fanciers. Many people hear or see this word being used casually in relation to dogs and get quite offended. They assume that the only way the word can be used is as a curse.
Does anybody else have any thoughts on this? It's just something I've been mulling over for awhile.
-Melissa C.

More A-town and B-ville

I read the A-town B-ville parable a few times, and have several thoughts on it. Some of them overlap with Chloe, Emily, and Bryce's posts. One of Emily's points was that it was ironic that A-town didn't want to destroy the moral character of their town, but they ended up doing this anyway. Elaborating on this, I thought that it was ironic that while A-town's plan made people look down on the welfare recipients, B-ville's plan made people jokingly envy the policyholders that received insurance "for having been 'up there with the big shots'".

The way the insurance was presented in B-ville (the ceremony) made a big difference in the way it was accepted. As Hayakawa emphasizes in another section of the book, people like socializing. It is inevitable that they would like something presented at a social ceremony better than something mailed to them discreetly.

After reading the parable, I concluded, as Chloe touched upon in her second point, that it wasn't what was done about the unemployment that mattered, but how it was done. It doesn't matter what word the leaders used to describe the $500 the families were receiving, but the connotations the word had, as Bryce mentioned in his post. They could have used either the word "insurance" or the word "welfare", or any other word describing $500. The people didn't know what either of the words meant beforehand (as shown by "...the idea [of insurance] was entirely new to his fellow commissioners." on page 79 and the fact that the A-town leaders had to choose whether to use the term "dole" or the term "welfare".) It was the feelings that the leaders chose to associate with the words "welfare" and "insurance" that made the people act as they did. When the term "insurance" was given a positive connotation, the recipients and their neighbors accepted it happily. When the term "welfare" was given a negative connotation, the recipients were ostracized from the community. It could have been the other way around, and the word with the positive feeling associated with it would have still had a good response, just as the word with the negative feelings associated with it would have had a detrimental response.

Essentially, it didn't matter what the leaders did for the unemployed families, but how it was done, and it didn't matter which words they used to describe what they did, but what feelings were attached to those words.

-Audrey

Misinterpretation of Presymbolic Communication

Emily, and no doubt many other people, have already recognized the flexibility of language as a theme of the text. We all know, and have probably all experienced the fact that language can be misinterpreted and cause conflicts between people. However, I thought it was interesting how Hayakawa pointed out that presymbolic language can also be misinterpreted. On page sixty-two, he gives three examples of this.

Hayakawa states that the educated are more ignorant of the presymbolic uses of language. I partially agree with this—the educated are ignorant of some presymbolic uses, while the uneducated are ignorant of others. It doesn’t matter whether a person is educated or not. It all depends on their point of view. Just as different symbolic languages (English, German, French, etc.) are understood by different people around the world, so are different types of presymbolic communication. Using the first example Hayakawa gives, the “chatter at parties and receptions” that the person is listening to may seem trivial to him, but it makes perfect sense to the guests engaging in it. (In fact, it probably is trivial, but the triviality of social conversations is already being discussed.) The person then goes on to interpret the “chatter” according to his own point of view, and makes a false generalization about the people at the party. It has nothing to do with how much he is educated.

Does anybody else have opinions on this?

-Audrey

The Link Between Actions and Words

The cliche that "actions speak louder than words," tends to undermine the power of language. Actions are quite effective, no doubt, and draw people's attention far more than words alone, but actions are only the result of a speaker's vocal expressions. That is, the words used in one's speech are responsible for evoking actions from others. Without the verbal command, no actions would ensue.


Hitler's articulate speeches roused his supporters to action, resulting in World War II. As Hayakawa states in the preface of Language on page xii, "...if the majority of our fellow citizens are more susceptible to the slogans of fear and race hatred than to those of peaceful accommodation and mutual respect among human beings, our political liberties remain at the mercy of any eloquent and unscrupulous demagogue." Words, therefore, are the arbiters of action within a society.

-Chloe Martianou

Analysis of Noises for Noise's Sake

On page fifty-seven of Language, Hayakawa states that talking gives people "a pleasant sense of being alive." I agree with this entirely, but will rephrase it to: "Socializing gives people the sense of fitting in with everyone else."

At parties, people socialize not only so they aren't perceived as rude, but also because they don't want to be a social outcast. They want to be accepted and heard by others. Social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, are very popular nowadays because it provides people with the chance of communicating and befriending others. On special occasions, such as holidays and birthdays, friends and family are invited to celebrate the occasion together.

Every individual, whether reticent or outgoing, needs to socialize to a certain degree.

-Chloe Martianou

Response to A-Town B-Ville Parable

Nice, points, Chloe. I took another look at this parable and noticed some irony which I'd like to point out:

- A-Town's officials decided to use the term "welfare" as a euphemism for "dole", but the citizens still had a derogatory connotation with the word.
- A-Town tried an approach that would not "destroy the moral character" of its people, yet those on welfare suffered from feelings of inferiority
-B-Ville was less of a businesslike community, yet the terms they used in their government aid system had a businesslike sound to them: "insurance", "citizen policyholders", and "claim adjusters"
(emily donahue)

A-Town and B-Ville Parable

I found the A-Town and B-Ville parable to be very interesting. At the end of this short story, Hayakawa leaves the reader to evaluate its lesson.

I made two conclusions after reading the parable:

1) The story is primarily about the significance of word choices within a society, and how the community reacts to such choices. A-Town's word choice, "welfare," was derogatory and denounced the unemployed. This, in turn, utterly humiliated the unemployed in that community, and led them down the path of suicide, a clash between classes, and unhappy lives. B-Ville, however, substituted "welfare" for "insurance" in order to avoid any acrimony amongst the people. The mere word "insurance" provided this community with the impression that the unemployed had already done their part for B-Ville, and deserved to be compensated. Word choices should therefore be selected wisely within a community, lest other issues arise and cause more trouble.

2) The community itself and its approach to an issue play a role in affecting how different social classes view each other. A-Town was a more industrious community because it was comprised mainly of business people. The moment I read that A-Town's leaders were "substantial and sound-thinking business people," I inferred that A-Town was more of a capitalist community. When recession struck A-Town, the leaders dealt with the indigent in the most limited way possible, with the welfare, but on the condition that the unemployed were exposed to the public through newspapers. B-Ville, on the other hand, was an isolated, small-town community. This forced the people to be closer, and help the needy when recession hit the community. The difference between both communities was their view on how to deal with the unemployed. A-Town's method for dealing with the indigent was brutal, demoralizing, and tainted from the beginning. B-Town used a more humane and encouraging method that kept the community together.

Does anybody else have other conclusions for this parable?

-Chloe Martianou

A Unifying Theme

I don't know about you, but I'm about halfway through the reading of Language in Thought And Action. I thought it would be a good idea to brainstorm some unifying themes of the text to use as guidelines for reading. These can be used to aproach the text from different perspectives or as "pathways" for analysis of its concepts. Hope these help, and that you would expand upon them!
Themes:
- Language as the seperation btw. man and animals
- Language = a social tool
- The versatility and flexibility of words & phrases
- Language as a way of uniting people
- Language as a means of seperating people (different tongues, accents, ways of speaking, etc.)
(emily donahue)