Words Fail Me!

When I read Locke, a lot of what he was saying made sense to me. And conveniently enough, I felt the same when I read Richards and Ogden. In a lot of ways I think that they are all saying similar things, just in different ways.

Ogden, Richards, and Locke all seem to agree on the idea that words “stand for” something, and thus they can be fairly treated as symbols or signs. “Throughout almost all our life we are treating things as signs. All experience, using the word in its widest possible sense, is either enjoyed or interpreted (i.e., treated as a sign) or both, and very little of it escapes some degree of interpretation.” (Ogden and Richards 1270) This idea that words are actually signs that are meant to be interpreted definitely coheres with Locke’s argument. But while Ogden and Richards seem to be focusing on the necessity of this interpretation of signs, it seems to me that Locke cares more about the difficulty in that. Locke says that these things that words stand for must be learned, and learning is the hardest part.

Also, Richards, Ogden, and Locke all seem to be arguing that language is a difficult process that allows room for failure. I would say; however, that I think Locke has a relatively more understandable argument as well as a more optimistic outlook. Locke really thoroughly discusses the imperfection of language. He says, “The imperfection of words is the doubtfulness or ambiguity of their signification, which is caused by the sort of ideas they stand for.” (Locke 817) So, Locke can acknowledge that words and language have their pitfalls. I think that the “ambiguity of their signification” is definitely largely responsible for the sort of failure of words as symbols. Richards and Ogden would argue that to better understand the word (or what the words represents), the interpreter should seek assistance from the context. They say, “The interpreter understands the sign in context.” (Ogden and Richards 1270) But then, there is always that chance that the context can be misunderstood, or even mean different things for different people. This leaves additional room for word failure.

So the phrase, “words fail me” seems rather fitting to this conversation. Richards, Ogden, and Locke might say that words have failed them. And they’ve failed me. And you. And they will continue to fail us all, time and time again. But through interpretation and use of context, we can attempt to give words their proper meanings. What exactly is proper, though? I am not sure. Locke made it pretty clear that there is no absolute and universal meaning for a word. But can we achieve a sort of relative universality?