The Trouble With Wigglely Words

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with words for most of my life (which must be quite obvious from the topics in this blog!).

On the one hand, without words it would be very difficult to tell you about anything.  Like, something that happened to my friend Sarah yesterday at the park and why I was so upset.  (Though I don't have a friend named Sarah, didn't go to the park, and was not the least upset.)   Or for that matter, without words I would be unable to tell you what I hoped to be doing five years from now and why.  (Here you breathe a huge sigh of relief.)

If you want to know (and even if you don't), ....
linguists call this attribute of language ‘displacement’—the ability to talk about things that are not present at the time and place of the utterance—a very handy ability indeed.   (Although, it has also been characterized as the capacity to lie.  But, I am not lying now. Trust me.)

Well, what about body language?  As anyone will tell you, body language is extremely ‘vocal’—in fact, some studies show that body language contributes from 60 to 90% of intended meaning in a face-to-face conversation (depending of which survey you check).   But, body language without words just can’t explain why my uncle thinks he’s a giraffe (see earlier post).   Nor can you see my body language right now, can you?  (I so hope not.)

So, I love, love, love words and use them all the time!  (and all the people said…)

But, there’s another famous attribute of language that simply drives me nuts...I hate, hate, hate it.  Words, as it turns out, are somewhat squirrely.  They don't stay put.  They keep running off in different directions.

The official term is ‘arbitrariness’.   You see, words don’t in and of themselves have any inherent meaning.  They only take on the meaning we give to them.   

Word merely ‘represent’ meanings that people have agreed to.  In English we say ‘dog’, but the French say ‘chien’.   But English speakers have agreed to what the word 'dog' represents and French speakers have agreed to what the word 'chien' represents. exact same thing in the hearer’s mind that it does in yours.  But, this almost NEVER happens!  Which of us ever agrees exactly with anything?  Because, even if we speak the same language, each person conjures up a slightly different picture in their mind of what each word represents.

 So, you can have a picture in your mind of this four-legged, furry, tail-wagging, saliva dripping, jumping around little creature that barks at almost everything, and  you can call it a ‘dog’ or ‘chien’—or any number of other sounds, depending on what has been agreed to by a certain group of speakers.   For perfect understanding to occur the words agreed to should represent the

For example:  My ‘idea’ of a dog (when I hear the word ‘dog’) may not exactly call up the same image of the creature in your mind as it does in my mind.  I say ‘dog’ and you may be thinking “big, lanky mutt”, but I’m thinking “little, fluffy fido”.   Now, if all we talked about were dogs, we could easily get around the dilemma by adding in the breed of the dog and a few more details, but you get the idea.  It’s hard for any ONE word, or group of words, to adequately convey the exact same meaning to any TWO minds. 

Case in point—the difficulty of getting your hairdresser or barber to understand what you mean when you describe how you want your hair to look after they get done with you.  No matter which words you use, or how many, they almost never produce what you asked for!  I hate that!  

The ancient Greeks boasted of being able to say much in little—“to give a sea of matter in a drop of language” was regarded as the perfection of oratory.  Yet, here we are thousands of years later and editors are still in business.  In fact, I've re-written this short piece dozens of times already and will likely change it again (I just did).  All so that I can find the perfect words and combinations of words that will be so clear that you will get the right picture of what it is I'm talking about.  Have I succeeded yet?  

In a word, if words weren’t so arbitrary, we’d need less of them to get our point across and we’d get a lot more mileage out of the ones we did use.  The hairdresser would know exactly what ‘look’ I was going for.  My husband would know exactly how I feel.  I would never be misunderstood. 

But, what if we were always perfectly understood?  Where then would be the 'wiggle room' we needed to back out of something?  "Well, I didn't really mean that...I meant..."

And speaking of 'wiggle room', that interesting aspect of language is being exploited more and more these days, particularly in the political arena, don't you think?  Makes me long for words to be a little less wobbly.  (Remember Bill Clinton’s statement “It all depends on what the word ‘is’ is”!)  When words can mean different things to different people, how can we ever work together and build anything together?

Sound familiar?  

It should.  That’s exactly what happened about 4000 years ago at a place called Babel where folks all spoke the same exact language and understood each other so well that God said about them, “and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do”—so critical was the power of language in their endeavors.  But, what exactly were they trying to do that was so bad that God felt the need to intervene?

Genesis 11 tells us they were building a city and a tower that would reach into heaven SO THAT they would make for themselves a name—or in common vernacular:  a name for themselves.  Apparently, they no longer felt the need to recognize and honor God and His name, but wanted to have all the honor and recognition come their way. 

Again…sound familiar? 

Sure does!  But then and now, God’s name (and all it stands for) is non-negotiable.  It IS what it IS, and nothing created can be greater than its Creator!  It has an EXACT meaning.  So, God did them a favor by blocking their efforts at self-aggrandizement—giving them and their descendants a future opportunity to understand this truth.

Yet, 4000 some odd years later we see that humankind has pretty much the same intent and preferences.  It’s still a ‘Me-world’ out there, and our babbling hasn’t got any better.  

(But, I digress--the significance of 'naming' is a topic for another post on another day...)

So, is there hope?  Will our words ever be clearly understood by others?  Will we ever find the perfect word or words that give our exact message and meaning to another person?  

In a word…yes!  The prophet Zephaniah tells us that there is coming a time when God will “turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent.”  (Zephaniah 3:9) 

Until then we may not speak a pure language among ourselves, but we have a pure language modeled for us:  The Word of God. 

“Every word of God is pure.  He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.”  Proverbs 30:5  “Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it.”  Psalm 119:140.

Until then, our best hope of being understood now is when we all speak that language.  

I hope you know what I mean.