Lewis Carol's seminal work Alice Through the Looking Glass contains a revealing conversation between the main character and Humpty Dumpty—who, of course, is sitting on a wall. The conversation drifts and Humpty says, “ '...There's glory for you!'” Alice confesses that she doesn't know what he means.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'” “But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'” Alice objected. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” (Carrol, 196)
Words cannot be expected to communicate anything if the wrong definition is assumed. Humpty Dumpty's assumption that what a word signifies is subjective is fallacious; without translation, his statement is unintelligible. The same principle should be applied to all other words as well. Yet, illogically, people are wont to allow language to cheapen itself by permitting a degradation in word signification.
Generally, those who content themselves with an “unbiased” purview of the rapid conflation of various words are said to be descriptive in their mindset. The most popular and most frequently used descriptive dictionary is the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Fiske, 12). Dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster's do a disservice to those who seek the correct definition of a word by giving, rather than the true meaning, a popular one.
Arguments abound: Why should a word maintain meaning? Who should decide if a word is correct or not? Has not the language already drifted a great deal, its roots radically different from the current form? As you consider the explanations, you should take care to observe it disinterestedly, providing a chance to gain personal preference based on the varying views.
Why should a word maintain its meaning? Word signification is fundamentally based that one word, by use of other words, signals a meaning or definition. Therefore, other words are needed in order to describe one word. This chain of “differential references,” or substitutions, as infinite as it is necessary, gives a slippery possibility to language, as Jacques Derrida explains in his essay “The Exorbitant. Question of Method.” Therein he demonstrates that language is “always already” in a state of shifting meaning and ambiguity (159). If language is already precariously positioned over the gulf of incomprehension, how does exacerbating the situation and further muddying the comprehensive waters serve to improve understanding? If words are fundamentally flawed, why capitalize on the flaw and further disrupt the machinations of language by insisting that certain words mean certain things when they don't?
One of Shakespeare's most oft-quoted soliloquies is uttered by Juliet in the play Romeo and Juliet. She laments: “O Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou Romeo?” (1020) When popular parlance insists erroneously that “wherefore” is a synonym for “where,” the question ceases to be a penetrating inquisition into identity, and becomes instead a trivial query of locale. “Wherefore” means “why,” and the necessity of such a definition is key to understanding the passage. A prescriptive (or one who feels that language should conform to the rules and not fade into a conflation of confused connotations) thinker would cite this example as a prime demonstration for the need to maintain fixed definitions of words.
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Works Cited:
Carrol, Lewis. The Complete Illustrated Lewis Carrol. New York, New York: Gallery Books, 1991.
Derrida, Jacques. “The Exorbitant. Question of Method.” On Grammatology. 1967. Trans Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976: 159.
Fiske, Robert Hartwell. The Dictionary of Disagreeable English. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 2005.
Shakespeare, William. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. New York, New York: Gramercy Books, 1975.
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