(no subject)

[johnpalmer]

Words don't have power.

*MEANING* has power.

That is all....

Comments

[98.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Nicely put.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Hm. YesNoMaybe.

Meaning has power, but words carry, shape, project, and allow for meaning.

Analogy: it's the bullet that hurts, but without a gun from which to shoot it, it has little effect.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Nod. But, if the meaning could be conveyed telepathically, perhaps you'd have the same effect. (I guess it would, but how do we know, not being telepathic, and all?)

And meaning goes beyond the specific words, and sometimes even beyond intonation and emphasis, and everything else.

It's like, meaning is the energy, and words can shape that energy somewhat, cushion it, spread it out, or focus it more intensely, but it's the energy that is going to have the effect.

in as far

[andreas_schaefer]

as this is "sticks and stones may hurt my bones but words will never hurt me " I agree - - However words are symbols and to claim symbols have no power I would hesitate. And that is said from a haed-science , nearly agnostic viewpoint. ( and yet: "in the beginning was the word ...." )

I think the relationship between meaning, words and power needs to be researched further. ( on the individual level you are probably right - and the realization that certain words by certain people do not have power in themselves but their meaning has - is a valuable one )

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Meanings have power, the media for conveying that meaning can afect the meaning.

A meaning can be conveyed by an image, or by words. Usually the image trumps words.

[persimmon.livejournal.com]

Yes. But remember to allow for the fact that your *perception* of the meaning also affects it.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I suspect we're arguing aspects in parallel. Or, possibly, as I realized in typing this, that we may perceive and understand the world in different ways.

Your point seems to be (and please correct me if I'm not getting it right) that the power is solely in the meaning conveyed, however that meaning is conveyed.

My argument is, I think, closer to the popular version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which is that language *creates* meaning, and there is no meaning without language.

siliconshaman points out that meaning can be strongly conveyed by images, but my perception is that even given an image, I require words to describe/explain/convey/understand what is meant. If you perceive more holistically and less verbally, that might not be the case for you.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

To me that seems oddly in contradiction with your observation of taunting as magic. While meaning certainly does have power, the shape in which it's conveyed can be pretty important, too. (That's why a random well-written piece of poetry can be more memorable than a random well-written piece of prose, or a pun can make you wince. How words hang together can most definitely be a strong component of how the meaning affects you.)

[kightp.livejournal.com]

A meaning can also be conveyed by a gesture, a touch, a non-verbal sound (laughter, a sexual growl, the sob of a person in pain). It may not be as clear or nuanced as (we think) it is when we use words, but it's meaning, nonetheless.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Yes... in fact, that's part of what I was thinking about when I wrote that. It's both the meaning that's transmitted and received, *and* the static that occurs when those meanings are different.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well... I don't think that there is "no meaning without language", so much as that the instant there is meaning, there is a form of natural language. If you have a thought about something, it can be labelled, even if the label is only "that thought that I am having", and once you have labels, you can have a language.

I think of language as a kind of focussing/limiting process, which is useful for thought, but not essential... i.e., I think people can think without words, and can express their thoughts to themselves without words, but I'm pretty sure that 'thinking in words' is a large part of people who have a language.

What I'm suggesting is that no word (or set of words) is powerful inherently. Words are powerful only insofar as they express an idea (which may be wordless, or which may or may not be different from the words used to express it), and then the idea is what's powerful.


Of course, the funny thing about communication is that the idea that a person has from hearing words might be different from the meaning that was attempted to be conveyed. I could imagine that an attempt to express meaning is like an energy field, and an attempt to understand is like a reading on that energy field, and the words used are the things that sensors can pick up. Whether the sensors pick up the real qualities of the energy field can depend on a lot of factors. Sloppily expressed ideas give the sensors less to work with; strongly expressed ones give the sensors more raw material to use to try to glean the meaning.

Re: in as far

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

My claim is not that the symbols have no power, exactly... it's that the power comes from what the symbols represent.

An analogy would be "meaning is the electricity; words are the transmission lines". The words are important, and can be extremely important... power lines, phone lines, and network cabling are all ways that electricity is transmitted, but they all have different effects on what that electricity does.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well, once I was trying to figure out how to define art, and my decision was that the key difference between art and non-art was that art was an attempt to communicate beyond the medium.

Somewhere between "that's a nice looking fruit tree" and "lush, leafy goddess of wood, reaching to the heavens, yet showering the earth with bounty", I think there's not merely a change in words, but in actual essential meaning. Or, maybe just a reshaping of how easily one can perceive the meaning, or what hints there are to the meaning.

I definitely don't think words are unimportant... I feel that words are the map, and meaning is the territory, more or less. (But it's not a very strong analogy... an incorrect map can be shown to be wrong (not fitting the territory) more easily than incorrect wording can be shown not to fit an intended meaning.)

Regarding teasing and magic... one of the things I feel pretty strongly about is that much of the harm of teasing/insults/etc., is not so much the words themselves, but the message "you are worthy of being ridiculed or hurt, and we will do this happily".