Praying for Flordia
- Thread starter Dr. Popalot
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Sorry, you totally miss my point. I'm not quarreling with your definition of religion. I'm talking about the ordinary meaning of the word atheist. If you don't believe there's a god, you're an atheist (as Stalin was). At the same time you may be "religious", if you define religion sufficiently widely.Beady said:
I don't disagree that some dictionaries indeed define religion in that way, although the three I have consulted (two American and one British) include belief in a deity in their primary definition of the word - they give a wider meaning as a secondary definition. As a matter of interest, which dictionary were you quoting from?
And by the way, a dictionary definition is also no more than an opinion, although presumably a well-informed one.
Beady
Philosopher
allanb said:
Well, you're missing my point, so I guess we're even.
I mean that *Stalin* was the Soviet Union's "god." At the very least, he stood in for a deity. He was omnipotent, omnipresent, his bureaucracy(sp?) rivaled that of the Pope, he had his priests and bishops, his dogma, his prophets...
In short, Soviet communism had all the trappings of any established church, and more than some. I honestly don't know how you can meaningfully distinguish between it and, say, Catholicism.
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate.
A dictionary is a benchmark for the use of language. As with anything else, if you depart from the benchmark you are on your own,and there is no longer a standard by which your activity can be measured. That is why trashing the dictionary or inventing a new definition is a favorite tactic of the losing debater.
BTW, according to the front essay in my dictionary, a word has two types of meaning: the "denotation," or standard meaning, and the "conotation," or personal meaning. "The Dictionary" is concerned with denotations, leaving the conotations to the person doing the talking. Ergo, your assertion is wrong; the dictionary definition is not a matter of opinion, but is rather the standard against which other proposed meanings (which *are* matters of opinion) are measured.
[Hey! This is fun!]
Well, I can only repeat: if old Joe Stalin didn't believe in the existence of a supernatural deity, he was an atheist. What other people believed about him, and whether Soviet Communism amounted to a religion, is a different question.
As far as dictionaries are concerned:
Every definition in every dictionary is the opinion of the lexicographer about the meaning(s) of the word, and he will give as many meanings as he has space for. I think it's wrong to talk about a "standard". You may find a standard definition for a word such as kilometre or week but never for something as complex as religion.
What people are often guilty of (not you, of course!) is selecting from a particular dictionary a particular definition which suits their argument, and referring to it as "the dictionary definition".
As far as dictionaries are concerned:
I don't think a "benchmark" is a good analogy. A benchmark shows something that doesn't vary, like the height of a mountain (OK, OK, I know about volcanoes.) A dictionary is an attempt to describe the usage of words in a language, but language is not uniform or consistent, so there are many dictionaries and they are not the same. Even within one dictionary, there may be several meanings for a word, some of which may be quite rare: I stand by my statement that not every meaning that appears in a dictionary is necessarily the "ordinary" meaning.Beady said:
Every definition in every dictionary is the opinion of the lexicographer about the meaning(s) of the word, and he will give as many meanings as he has space for. I think it's wrong to talk about a "standard". You may find a standard definition for a word such as kilometre or week but never for something as complex as religion.
Depends on the scope of the dictionary. (I can't resist pointing out that there are three Ns in connotation.) If there's room for it, a dictionary should give any connotation that helps the reader to understand the word fully. For instance, Webster's New World, under the heading connotation, gives as an example the distinction between "politician" and "statesman", and under the heading politician gives the comment "... frequently used in a derogatory sense, with implications of seeking personal or partisan gain..."
What people are often guilty of (not you, of course!) is selecting from a particular dictionary a particular definition which suits their argument, and referring to it as "the dictionary definition".
Beady
Philosopher
allanb said:
I understand that such straying is called "conversation."
I'm not against the idea of starting a new thread, but unless someone else comes along with something new to add, I think we've pretty well gone as far as we can on the subject.
You do raise the question, though: If you're not going to use the dictionary to decide what a word means, then what are you going to use it for?
Beady said:
I think this brings up a good point. In many arguments we get to the point we are arguing if something is true, but then we argue over what that thing really is. Part of the problem is that we didn’t stipulate definitions in advance since we didn’t know we meant different things by the use of what ever word we used to define the thing we were arguing over.
I’d say that dictionary usage arguments come up often enough to merit a thread. However, dictionaries are merely tools for language users and they are strictly reportive. Dictionary definitions are taken from common, written usage but they don’t stipulate how a word must be used.
Beady
Philosopher
Skep said:
No, but if you are going to challenge a dictionary definition once, then it seems to me that you cannot ever again cite a dictionary definition. In legal terms, you will have impeached your own witness; that is, you will have proclaimed that the dictionary is untrustworthy as a reference in at least one instance, and are then forever burdened with establishing its trustworthiness on all subsequent occasions in which you wish to use it. After all, if you claimed it was wrong once, then I can claim it's wrong this time, and someone else can claim it's wrong next time; the result being that, ultimately, it will be wrong every time.
That is why I choose to rely on the dictionary for all occasions. When the dictionary changes or adds a definition, I will follow suit. If nothing else, no one then has an excuse for not knowing what I mean.
Beady said:
This rigid approach is not going to help you win arguments.
The dictionary (as if there was only one) is created by researchers who watch how people use words in written form, such as in books and magazines, and then update the dictionary’s definitions when a new use becomes common enough. However, dictionaries are neither comprehensive nor current. The research and publishing cycles lag behind usage; plus, the dictionary does not report definitions based on spoken usage. Addtionally, dictionaries don’t report jargon or other specialize vocabulary until they make it to the mainstream.
So, if you are going to wait until the dictionary tells you what to say, you are going to be behind the times.
Beady
Philosopher
Skep said:
Using a meaning that is not in the dictionary is little different from "proving" your case by resorting to unverifiable evidence. It allows you to shift your ground without appearing to, and to weasel out of uncomfortable positions. It is a dishonest debating technique. You might win an argument with it, but it won't be the argument you started out to win.
First, I never cared much for slaves to fashion; they generally prove as transitory as do their fashions. Second, I never said I let anyone tell me what to say; I said I use a publicly accessable standard so I am easily understood. Third, if you intend a meaning that is not in the dictionary, you are going to have to prove to me that the meaning is valid, in addition to proving your main case.
Beady said:
I certainly don’t disagree with your desire for clear communications. I think it is the inflexibility that is implied in your statements that has chafed my sense reasonability.
I do think that you are right that we should each know what the other means when entering an argument over some point but I often find that people are using different, yet legitimate, meanings of a word. Your dictionary definitions won’t help you prevent such a misunderstanding, nor will they prevent arguments over meaning since there are many dictionaries with many definitions. Further, reliance on a dictionary won’t help you with newer terms. Try and find “flamebait†or “internet troll†(no, I’m not putting your earnestly reasoned posts in those categories, they are just examples of very common terms that are fairly new) in your dictionary. Likewise, your dictionary may not tell you what it means to “Google†someone, what a “weblogger†does or what a neocon is, yet I don’t have to prove to you that they are valid words nor that they have valid meanings since all three terms refer to things that are having a huge impact on society right now even thought they probably aren’t in your precious dictionary [please pardon the overly sarcastic rhetorical closer, I couldn’t resist…].
Beady
Philosopher
Skep said:
The only "inflexibility" I believe I have displayed is my insistence on "the dictionary" as a standard. I don't believe I ever said that language was set in stone. As with criminal and civil laws, there are mechanisms for change and I have no objection to adopting those changes but, with both law and language, I find I am on safer ground if I keep my personal anticipation of those changes to a *judicious* minimum.
In the first instance, the variation isn't as great as you seem to believe. Yes, there are national and regional differences (don't ever tell an Englishman where your "closet" is until you find out what he wants to do there), but these are surprisingly few. The existence of "the dictionary," in all its forms and editions, is a major reason for this lack of variation.
In the second instance, dictionary meanings survive unaltered through 99+% of all your "fashionable" changes in the language, and make it possible to listen to those who went before. Think I'm being melodramatic? Two hundred years after Chaucer's death, his 'Canterbury Tales' were almost unintelligible to the Elizabethans. By contrast, lexicographers credit Shakespeare's work with the standardization of the language, much as a dictionary does, so that the average English speaker (regardless of nationality) can read Elizabethan English now, 500 years later, with very little extra effort. I think it would be a major tragedy if the average American, 200 years after Independence, had to read the Declaration and Bill of Rights "in translation." That day will come, of course, but I believe "the dictionary" is largely responsible for the fact that that time is still far in the future.
And those computer terms you mention? They may or may not survive the decade; I'm betting most of them won't. In the meantime, it's my job to make an honest effort to make myself understood; it's your job to make an honest effort to understand. Seems to me that every objection you've made stems from an effort to cast communication as a one-way affair.
Beady said:
While it is true that dictionaries are useful in the standardization of language, almost nobody on the planet learns any significant portion of their vocabulary from any dictionary. Language is learned, for the most part, through context. How many Englishmen ever learned the meaning of the WC from a dictionary?
In this case, it is more the influence of the printing press than the dictionary that lead to the standardization of language. Early dictionaries did not make any attempt to be comprehensive. They only included unusual words. It wasn’t until the creation of OED centuries later that any attempt was made at a comprehensive dictionary, thus you cannot credit dictionaries for the standardization of English from Shakespeare’s time.
The longevity of “those computer terms†is irrelevant. The fact is that they are important now, and since we are arguing in the present that is the only thing that matters.
Clearly you are right when you suggest that communication requires the participation of more than one party, however you are mistaken in your assumption that you can reasonably restrict communication to words and meanings you can find in a dictionary. Dictionaries are not where words get their meanings, dictionaries are merely a place where their meanings are reported, if at all, well after they have been in use.
But I think we may need to agree to disagree at some point. I admit that I might try and argue your side of the dictionary argument if I thought it would give me some advantage in a disagreement. But the most important thing to me is not that we all should use a dictionary, but that we should make sure that we agree that we are talking about the same thing. Even if a word is in a dictionary, we still have to agree on what meaning we mean.