What Exactly Do You Mean By This Word?

For Richards and Ogden, the problem is that the word or “symbol” is being joined automatically with the referent, or what the symbol is referring to.  As they put it, the natural relationship between the symbol and the referent is that “Between the symbol and the referent there is no relevant relation other than the indirect one, which consists in its being used by someone to stand for a referent” (1275) but that a failure of symbols occurs in that “the fundamental and most prolific fallacy is, in other words, that the base of the triangle given above is filled in” (1276).  An example of this problem is that people may consider the word “dog” and the actual animal to be one and the same, even thought there is “no direct connection between say ‘dog’, the word, and certain common objects in our streets” (1275), so that the word becomes the animal and the animal becomes the word, when really the “symbol” and the animal being described aren’t the same thing and that the symbol is just that. A symbol.

Locke sees the failure of words a little differently.  He doesn’t so much complain about the fact that people can’t separate words from the things that they are referring too, but that words simply can’t express whatever significations (in Richards-Ogden terms, the “referents”) that they are trying to describe.  There is also the fact that since words and their (sometimes potentially multiple) significations have different meanings for different people, resulting in countless interpretations of the same word and leading to confusion.  For example, moral words in particular are “in man’s mouths little more than bare sounds; or when they have any, it is for the most part but a very loose and undetermined, and, consequently, obscure and confused signification” (819).

I know that both essays touched on both of these problems, but I tried to pick out what problem each piece was trying to focus on more.  I think that in the context our current word, Locke has outlined the more relevant problem, and it is a problem that is relevant and applicable to our everyday lives.  An immediate example I can think of is the use of the word “gay” to mean stupid, loser, unpleasant, etc.  I was raised never to use that word in the negative connotation, so that when I hear it used I actually do get confused sometimes.  And then when I read older texts and “gay” is used to mean happy, frolicking, and merry, I have to check myself to recognize the context.  Other words like “fag”, “lame”, and “dumb” also fit under this awkward and troublesome category as words that possess multiple significations or confused ones that mean different things to different people.  These are words that have been warped and changed with additional significations instead of being left as they are and having those other, new meanings be given new words to cover them.

I think that Locke’s problem is more relevant and more immediately accessible and recognizable in our society, but there might be others that disagree?  Maybe Richards and Ogden have the more applicable problem?  Maybe I haven’t picked out the right problems?  I don’t know, but this is what I thought up and anyone is welcome to throw in their opinions.