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What's Uour Definition.^
Whether you're pro or con — do you know exactly what it is you're beatin' your gums about? F'rinstance, take a look at this list of definitions of a certain inflammatory word!
By NICKY JACKSON
"When I use o word," Humpty Dumpty said, in
a rafher scornful fone. If means just whaf I choose if fo mean — neither more nor less."
—Lewis Carroll.
HEN it comes to denotations, most of us are Humpty Dumpties. We develop our own meanings for words, sometimes far afield from their strict definition. What do such terms as property, religion, or patriotism mean to you?
Remember a play of a few years back called "On Borrowed Time"? In Act I of that play, Gramps called the cantankerous aunt a "bird stuff er?" "What's a bird stuff er?" asked the little boy. Whereupon, Gramps sailed into an explanation to the effect that the aunt loo\ed like a bird stuffer, therefore she was a bird stuffer . . . because when God saw a dog, it looked like a dog, so he called it a dog, so it was a dog. And that, it seemed, was that.
And that, it seems, is the way most of us come by our own definitions of certain terms.
When an abstract noun is presented to several different people, a different mental picture is created in each mind, according to the past experience of each. For instance — the
word duty. To one it may be synonymous with honor; to another, with drudgery; and to still another, with social responsibilities.
The science of semantics helps bridge the gulf between connotation and denotation. This is, of course, the study of the influence of language upon thought. Hitler influenced the German mind by linking wea\ and decayed with democracy until democracy came to connote weak and decayed as an immediate m.cntal response.
Our language holds so many of these abstract terms that mutual understanding among human beings becomes increasingly difficult. Disagreement and even bloodshed result. And this is especially true in the realms of politics and religion.
Just for fun — and as an experiment-— I have been asking various people I meet what they mean by commuuism. This is a term tossed around in many conversations these days and fousd in almost every periodical you pick up. We read praise of Russia's advanced democracy from Eric Johnson, Joseph Davies, and the late Wendell Wilkie. We read condemnation for her totalitarianism from Colonel McCormack, Randolph Hurst, and Westbrook Pegler.
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