The Power of Language (Part 2)

Next up: the problem of interpretation

First, a personal experience:

In high school, I wrote the occasional short story for class projects, and sometimes for fun. One day, before English class had started, I was looking over a draft of one of my more recent stories, and the girl in front of me (who was familiar with some of my earlier writing) asked if she could check it out. I said it was just a rough draft still, but if she wanted to read it and tell me what she thought she could take it home that night, which she did.

The next day, I’m sitting in English class again before class when this girl comes in. The first words out of her mouth: “You pervert!”

I must confess, there were any number of things I could have expected her to say in response to my story, but that certainly wasn’t one of them… There was nothing in my story even remotely related to any 'perversion'.

“I can’t believe you wrote that!” she went on, grabbing the story from her backpack.

[Blank look from me]

She flipped the story over to the offending page and handed it to me. I scanned it quickly, saw nothing offensive, and said, “I really have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about…”

Finally, she pointed out the exact sentence that she found troublesome, only to get yet another blank look from me.

“Do you know what ______ means?” she said, exasperated.

“Um…beyond the obvious, no.”

She grumbled and turned around in her seat and didn’t say anything more, as class was now getting started.

This was quite a bewildering turn of events, but I couldn’t go on without knowing—so after class I went and grabbed a copy of the American Heritage Dictionary and looked up what _____ meant.

As you have probably guessed, the word (like many in English) has a ‘normal’ meaning, and also a dirtier, sexual meaning. And, as it happened, my usage of the word in the offending sentence happened to make sense both ways. It was, in actuality, one of the cleverest things I had ever written, although of course (as I will maintain to my grave) it was by accident.

[Now, of course, you want to know what the word was…and, of course, I’m not going to tell you. If you already happen to know the second meaning, then you’ll just have a laugh at my expense for my naivety. If you don’t know the second meaning, then, like me, you’ll probably have an all-consuming urge to find out, which I don’t want on my conscience…]

This exemplifies another problem with analyzing language—dual meanings. What to do when ‘bad words’ only happen to be bad some of the time—or only in some contexts or cultures. (Some of the British and Australian ‘swear words’ discussed yesterday happen to be just regular English words in America…) Plus, it seems that new words with underlying sexual contexts appear all the time. (Truth be known—virtually any expression can be ‘suggestive’ if you phrase it the right way: Compare saying to a co-worker “Are you going to catch the bus after work?” versus “So…do you wanna…*wink*wink* ‘catch the bus’ with me after work?”)

The incident with my story described above turned out to be pretty harmless (although that girl probably looked at me differently from that point on…), yet had I gotten so far as to publish the story or placed it in an area where people would read it and I wouldn’t be around to defend myself, what then? How much more difficult is it for politicians, General Authorities, or any other public speaker to have to analyze their entire message not only for clarity and content, but check to see if anything can be misinterpreted. An apostle committing a faux pas in a Conference talk might be given the benefit of the doubt by most people (while joked about by others for a while), but by spending even a small amount of time thinking about it, you’ve already distracted yourself from the actual content of the talk—not to mention, it will probably come to mind again the next time you see or hear that apostle speak at a later date.

The ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ thing comes into play here as well. What did the speaker really mean when he/she said that, and how did the listener interpret it when he/she heard it? And if the interpretations are vastly different, whose fault is it? This makes a big difference in regards to scripture—where important doctrines and policies are debated and refined based on the interpretation of a few words of scriptural text…and the people who wrote it aren’t usually around to answer questions about ‘what they meant’. (Thank goodness for modern day revelation, eh?) Should we really be surprised that people feel compelled to change the wording of the Bible and the Book of Mormon as time goes on—not that the truth behind them is any different, but that the common interpretation (the ‘receiving’ part) isn’t the same now as in the time period in which they were written?

Since the usage and interpretation of language varies so greatly for each individual person—depending on race, culture, time period--and often hinge on very small distinctions (I mean, even the MPAA makes a large distinction in determining movie ratings between whether F-words are in ‘verb’ or ‘adjective’ form…), that it’s no wonder we see so many communication gaps and controversies in modern society. Just take the Democrats’ and Republicans’ current argument over the definition of ‘traitor’, for example. Or ask a random man or woman what ‘feminism’ means to them… This issue can have serious consequences, as when a former employee hits the boss of a company with a sexual harrassment lawsuit—which depends largely on personal interpretation of words and actions.

Is there a solution? Beats me… The whole story thing in high school came out of nowhere, and many of the controversies regarding language I hear about today seem ridiculous (“How could they possibly be interpreting what he said to mean that?”), yet as I discussed here, the perception of a problem due to interpretation is still a problem, even if the ‘giver’ is totally clueless.

More next week…