by Ronald G Baars

Created on: November 04, 2009

How words attach meaning to everything

As I explore the inner workings of my life and my relationships I often arrive at one thing that seams to be an intimate part of the success of all those interactions. Communication, in its many forms, is the thread that ties all thought and actions together. Many of those interactions include words both of the written and the spoken variety. I find the spoken word can be challenging because unless you have developed a strong relationship with someone you can end up saying something completely different than what you intended. People will read lots of things into the words you say because of how you say them. They can also use the look on your face, your body language and how close you are to them to create other clues as to the message that is really being broadcast. This can contradict the message offered in words.

The written word is only slightly better in its reliability in transmitting a consistent message. This is because of several mechanisms that people are subconsciously using to interpret the words. One mechanism we use is that we use experiences we have had that are associated to the word to help enhance our understanding of the sentence. This can offer a negative or positive inference when none is implied by the word itself. People also try to visualize the sentence as they read. This can also be a problem unless you create a well crafted sentence that has lots of specific identifiers. Of course a well crafted sentence may then become too long and the reader ends up getting confused or loses interest before their mind has had time to thread together the thought. The use of words in written and spoken language as a way to assign meaning is an imperfect art at best. Not to mention, that each category is sophisticated and subtle enough to become a research topic or thesis of its own. In an effort to limit our scope we will leave the discussion of spoken words for another time and continue our discussion using some of the fundamental elements of written language.

Have you ever heard the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. To some extent this can be true. That is perhaps why ancient Native American cultures, the Egyptians and many other cultures used a written language that involved pictures. The intent of words is to convey a picture or idea to the reader. An example of how flawed and imperfect this process can be is found in North American history. As the first pioneers explored the west and

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