I want to comment on something Locke gets into pretty early
in the piece. Section five begins with: “words having naturally no
signification, the idea which each stands for must be learned and retained, by
those who would exchange thoughts, and hold intelligible discourse with others.
(818)” Thinking about this idea, I remember working as a camp counselor for
children either entering or currently in kindergarten. I was trying to explain to a little boy why
he couldn’t push other children, and needless to say it was not going very
well. But now I don’t think it was as much his fault but mine; he truly just
didn’t understand what he was doing wrong. There was no significance to the
words that I was speaking, until he was put in time out. Shortly after consequences were attached to
“no” his behavior changed; he started to recognize that time out was not fun
and when we said “no” there would be ramifications if he continued to bully
others. Its interesting now reading this quote, because I wish I could go back so
I could tell myself to just be patient and that its not his fault.
I was glad to see that Locke had included a section on
mistakes. “The names of simple ideas
are, of all others, the least liable to mistakes, (823)” and he goes on to
explain why. I could be wrong but Locke seems to be the first author that is
this open about mistaken interpretation.
Locke’s example, “Those which are not intelligible at all,
such as names standing for any simple ideas which another has not organs of
faculties to attain; as the names of colors to a blind man, (818)” really made
me think about what it would be like to be blind. The idea that you would know
what a color was, say blue, but the idea of the color blue meant nothing to
you, is wild. I’m still trying to wrap
my head around the idea of knowing a word for something but that word has no
meaning. There would be no way, or it would be very difficult for a blind
person, that has never seen color to describe something using a color. Unless
they use color as an emotion and say something like “I’m feeling blue.”
Also, what about the abstraction of cultural ambiguity in words and phrases. For example, the phrase "true blue" describes someone who is loyal. You don't even have to know the etymology of the phrase to know the meaning, and the inclusion of the word "blue" has absolutely no significance to the concept being portrayed. Slang, for example, is filled with "names standing for any simple ideas," which either is or is not cool.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to see how children around the kindergarten age develop vocabulary, and the connotations they seem to attach to particular terms. They have their own little brand of rhetoric, really.
ReplyDeleteI think the difficulty of communication which arises from different associations being paired with the same word which people employ while in conversation with one another is more easily observed in small children, although it is completely developmentally appropriate that small children often have different, ever-changing working meanings attached to terms. I've been scolded by preschoolers for calling sweatshirts "hoodies"...after having learned the word "hoodie" from other preschoolers. :)