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
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With enough electroshock therapy, perhaps. In all honesty, though, human beings are wired to make unconscious associations and barring any drastic mental changes, people will go on making millions of them without noticing. This is my opinion, at least.
ReplyDelete-Bryce Cody
If taken literally (by definition), we can't stop the unconscious assumptions we make about language. We're unaware of it and it's automatic. But somewhere in the world, there must be at least one person who can stop it. The population of the world is too great for there NOT to be such a person.
ReplyDelete-- tori lee
"All words have, according to the uses to which they are put, some affective character." (page 45)
ReplyDeleteI agree with the rest of you that all words are influenced by our particular feelings in some way. I also think that the affective connotations, as Hayakawa calls these unconsious assumptions, are different for each person, and it is sometimes hard to understand why a person dislikes something that you like.
-Audrey Kindsfather
The other thing about an unconscious association is you don't know that your brain is doing it. Therefore, its impossible to "try" to stop yourself from doing such a thing.
ReplyDelete-Bryce Cody
I agree with everyone that it is impossible to stop unconscious association but I think a lot of times the associations we make (such as with names) are conscious. If we stop telling ourselves that as humans we are programmed to make connections with almost all the words we use, maybe these associations will happen less often.
ReplyDelete-Alexa Kaczmarski