Quote:
Originally Posted by Yves S L
That historical approach to a word implies everybody is equally influenced by their social environments, or something like everybody is equally unaware of their own minds to observe how words were first learnt and applied and how the application of words influence their own minds.
I remember taking 5 years to learn how to define one word. I can recall the context in which I first learned the word, the meanings, associations, memories, and emotional interpretations I first applied to it, the reasoning behind why the original interpretations of the word was incorrect, the reasoning why similar words in the English langage do not have good dictionary definitions, a reasoning of why and how the lack of good dictionary definitions might influence other people's minds, and finally the reasoning of how and why to properly define the word relative to my own first hand experience/subjective judgement, and the finally understanding why few other people would understand what the word implies. However, I think I have just began to approach the word.
Though it is not directly similar to what I am referring to above, this man's experience of learning Chinese demonstrates a bottom up approach to defining a word which has analogies to what I dand described above (already posted this video in this thread): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9BJRE4r46g
Summary: if you want to know the influence of a word on your mind, then you would need some degree of self-awareness/mindfulness, because not everyone reacts similarly to similar words irrespective of the origins and historical journey of a given word. |
Do you believe that subjectivity is also in music? I mean, not everyone experiences the same emotional reaction to a melody, but I think there can be a general consensus whether a melody is deeply sad or not, for instance. What I am thinking with words is that they are both subjective, and also complicated by present and historical context, which I kind of see as a way in which language has evolved into something much more complicated than communication. Also, there is etymologies to think about, and how that effects a word's present use, though knowledge of these etymologies is itself socially-restricted somewhat. So language is both subjective and contextual.