Things as they are happening

Hello everyone, I suppose I need to be a bit more diligent about writing on my blog. I hope I can make this more of a daily thing rather than a weekly thing. So, that said, let me bring you up to snuff on what is going on.

As far as the job hunt goes, it is pretty bleak. I've heard absolutely nothing from any of the jobs I've applied for, not that there are many out there to apply for. I did get a rejection letter from one company and that was actually nice. It confirmed for me that at least SOMEONE was reading the stuff I was sending out.

At home the kids are doing good. Balin enjoys having me home everyday and Grace likes me being here when she gets home from school. It is nice having Megan home because she offers some adult companionship, something that I really need at times.

I've been writing on my two separate projects, though I think I'm going to focus my efforts on my fiction simply because I'm really not quite up to the task of writing my non-fiction. It is really demanding of my brain and in all honestly difficult to commit too when the kids are around. I'm going to post the first chapter of that text at the end of this so you get an idea of what direction I'm heading with that book. I think you'll understand what I'm talking about when I say that it taxes my mind.

My fiction project is now off the ground. I wrote again today for about an hour, including a complete rewrite of the prologue as I slept on it and was very unsatisfied with the imagery. I've got the first real character and have begun to flesh him out a bit. He is a book store owner named Sean Gilbertson. He's a twenty-something that is doing the work his dad left for him when the elder Gilbertson passed away. I was going to have the book store owner be nobody, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wanted him to be one of the main characters. I think he will provide some tension for the story later on. I'm looking forward to fleshing the part out more.

Anyways, things are all good here. Wanted to touch base and let everyone know that I'm doing okay (though jobless).

Okay, here is the first chapter (or part) of my non-fiction. I would love to hear what you think.

What is Definition Theory?

Definition Theory is an interpretation of the way words and their meanings “work” as a whole. Merriam Webster Online defines the two words separately as:

Definition: the action or the power of describing, explaining, or making definite and clear
Theory: the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another

So, it would reason that Definition Theory as a conjunctive word set could be defined as:

The action or power of describing, explaining, or making definite through the analysis of facts in relation to one another.

It is the process of examining the way we use words and how they use us. It is a new frame of reference for examining the way people interact, and the way we manipulate the accepted standard to allow us to get what we want. It is a way of making people do what we want. Definition Theory, and the understanding of it, is the control of the power mechanism inherent in all things.

How’s that for an explanation?

Let me try to give a little better explanation.

Definition theory really doesn’t have a definition itself. It is like trying to explain how something tastes. You can’t find a real short way of explaining it; instead, you are required to go into a great many details to give an adequate idea of what it is. Hopefully through this text I can answer the question of what it is.

Everything we know, everything we will ever know is based on definition. Furthermore, a majority that fluctuates with time and location generally controls the very definition of things. Control of these variables grants power to individuals and groups, allowing the furtherance and growth of the ever-changing definitive truth. As individuals and as a society we grant control over definition and call those who make these decisions leaders. To have control to set definition is to have ultimate power. This power is demonstrated in the fact that all arguments are based in definition. He/she who has the power to set definition can and will win every argument.

I hope to look at a great deal of things as we progress through this text. There are so many things that make this whole concept applicable to things in our everyday life. I hope to show a great many examples of how definitive theory works, and how we are surrounded by it without even being aware of it. My ultimate goal is to provide the reader with the ability to utilize this theory to influence their own world, rather than let them be completely influenced by it. In the very least I hope to create a new awareness, a new appreciation and perhaps even a new fascination with the way our language and lives work.
Chapter 1: Throwing Away What We Know

I carry a dictionary with me just about everywhere I go. It is an extremely useful tool, one that gives me a great deal of power over other people. For society, a dictionary is a written representation of acceptable truth. Think about it, who would argue with the definition given in Webster’s? Very few, if any would. The power of that book is incredible.

One of the themes that I will continually incorporate into this text is the power of definition to control and win arguments. A dictionary is hard copy of what our language means. By using that book we can verify, clarify and support many of our argumentative stances, often without reciprocal argument.

The fact is, and certainly something we want to “throw away” from our collective thinking, is the acceptance of the dictionary as cold, hard truth. Dictionaries are forced perceptions perpetrated by men. They are a preconceived representation of another person’s truth, fed to the public as absolute. Does this mean that the words and meanings in a dictionary are wrong? No, not necessarily. It is the concept of the dictionary that is wrong.

The only reason a word means what it means is because someone else told us what the definition is. A dictionary is nothing more than a list of these words and their meanings. We are the ones with the power to accept these meanings. Unfortunately we usually accept what is written rather than go against the norm. Traditionally this is a function of society. We do so as a method of conformance (but we’ll go into that in depth much later on). Take for instance the common statement: “You can’t always believe what you read [hear].” This is generally applied to news applications. It is difficult for us as a society to sit and listen to the news on television, or read a newspaper and not take what is being read as absolute fact. Yet, there are so often times when retractions must be made because an over-zealot, or misinformed newsperson took liberties and wrote something that wasn’t entirely true. Could it be that the same could happen in a dictionary?

It is this belief that we need to “throw away” if we are to truly utilize our language and our ability to influence definition. As long as we have this proverbial crutch we will continue to use it. I’m not necessarily saying that we have to abandon the works of Webster; instead, I’m trying to allow you the ability to use a dictionary when it suits you, instead of relying on it as absolute truth.

Why are dictionaries flawed?

The essential flaws that are found within dictionaries can be boiled down into three main reasons. The first, something I’ve already touched on, is the fact that dictionaries are a product of human beings and therefore contain a varying degree of human flaw. To prove this point let’s examine the first and most popular American Dictionaries: Webster’s.

The Bias of Webster

Noah Webster is arguably the most esteemed and recognized lexicographer in both American and European histories. Upon the release of his American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828, “College presidents, senators, and representatives hailed him; Congress and state legislatures issued congratulatory proclamations and, together with the courts, adopted Webster’s dictionary as their official standard, thus making his the ‘federal language’…” Webster, in writing his dictionary and through continued publication of his widely popular Blue Backed Speller, took his place among America’s founding fathers, as the father of the American language.

One of the things that is forgotten about Noah Webster and his dictionary is that because he was the last man ever to write a dictionary on his own (without the help of a staff or assistants) he had a great deal of leeway in the inclusion of information in his text. With this in mind it is understandable that Webster took the position that, “the business of the lexicographer is to collect, arrange, and define, as far as possible, all the words that belong to a language, and leave the author to select from them…according to his own taste and judgment.” With the ability to select words for inclusion in his dictionary, it’s apparent that Webster, as an author, commanded a great deal of power in the formation of the American language.

This power is best demonstrated in some of the changes, which Webster took upon himself to make, during the writing of his book. One of his best-known reforms was the introduction of new spelling. While this seems minor, it was, in effect, changing the way we wrote the words of our language. The change of the spelling of the word “honour” to “honor” is relatively unobtrusive, but had Webster been able to push through all of his reforms, we would be spelling words such as “ache” as “ake” or “women” as “wimen”.

Not only did Webster have the power to implement the new spellings to words, he had the ability to introduce completely new words to the population while at the same time effectively removing other words from the American vocabulary. Webster was the first to introduce Americanized words such as soapy, lengthy, skunk, hickory and chowder in his dictionary while at the same time omitting words, found in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (the previous standard for dictionaries), such as fishify, jackalent, jeggumbob, conjabble and fourta.

The most pertinent thing that Webster controlled, above and beyond the introduction of new vocabularies and spellings, was his somewhat prejudiced methods of defining terms. Webster was not only driven by the need to create a national language through his dictionary, but to inspire his readers through spiritual and patriotic revival. Examples of definitions include:

Happy, a….The pleasurable sensation derived from the gratification of sensual appetites render a person temporarily happy; he can be esteemed really and permanently happy, who enjoys peace of mind in the favor of God.

Witness, v.t….To see or know by personal experience. I witnessed the ceremonies in New York, with the ratification of the constitution was celebrated in 1788.

An American Dictionary of the English Language was written not only as a supplement to the language we spoke, but as “a well-spring of truths that promised his countrymen an increase in ‘the wealth, learning, moral and religious elevation of character, and glory’ of their country – a self-contained educative institution designed to serve as a secular companion to the Bible.”

Those definitions that Webster saw as vulgar were precluded from his dictionary, paving way for the establishment of a new supporting language of American slang. In Webster’s eyes “one might not legitimately seek to fix the language but clearly one had the moral duty to cleanse it.” This moralistic ideal lead to the formulation of a set standard in dictionary writing, one that occurs in some dictionaries even today. For example, Merriam-Webster’s Third International edition in 1961 lacked any of the obscene “four letter words”.

Censorship in other forms has shaped our dictionaries and influenced our ability to learn. For example, in Texas, all schoolbooks are reviewed by the state, and because of inappropriate definitions, have removed books such as the American Heritage Dictionary from the bookshelves, thus influencing further editions and the appropriateness of the definitions contained within. Furthermore, an illustrative sentence in Webster’s Second New International (1934) suggesting that “electricity had replaced gas” was excised from the reprint after complaints from the gas industry. The fact is, historically definitions have changed or been removed from dictionaries based on personal bias of the writers, editors and even consumers.

Further deceptions can be demonstrated simply by examining the titles of the many dictionaries that appear on store shelves. Tapping into the unprotected name of Webster, dictionary sellers influence their buyers with titles such as: Random House Webster’s, Webster’s New World, Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary 2000 ed., and Langensheidt’s Universal Webster. Countless other examples exist. The only true dictionary that is the direct descendant of Webster’s 1828 work is the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which bought the publishing rights to the great dictionary in 1841.

Dictionaries have never been divine creations as it has been compared, but are instead creations of men. Some of these men were brilliant scholars and professors, while other contributors were more delusive. One such example was Dr. William Minor, a clinically insane murderer and resident of the English mental hospital, Broadmoor. Confined to a cell, he contributed more than 10,000 definitions to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The fact is, dictionaries are very deceptive and thus should not be considered “absolute truth”. The thing to remember about them is that they were written by human beings, forcing us to realize that they are just as susceptible to personal opinion and bias as any other book. What Webster was doing in the beginning was not only documenting our language, but in effect, deciding for us how our language was to work. Since then it has been nothing more than trickle down education, as his book still commands the same authority as it did in 1828.

This does not necessarily mean that the modern day dictionary is steeped in the personal rhetoric of Noah Webster. For the most part the dictionaries of today are pretty much standardized and unbiased. Instead they simply state the definitions, yet there will always be some editing involved.

Dictionaries as a foundation are very selective. First off, there are simply too many words in the American language to include in a truly functional dictionary. In a society of smaller, faster and easier, we have trimmed down the very content of our dictionaries, creating varying complexities in our books. These are then assigned labels, providing a marketing tool, yet effectively watering down the books. Go to a bookstore and look at the dictionaries there. You will find collegiate dictionaries (lexicons aimed at college students or grads, with the intention of playing on the formal and advanced education of the consumer), or “pocket dictionaries that boast thousands of definitions yet fail to admit that the essential meanings of the words have been diluted down so much that the complete “acceptable” meaning of a word is not even conveyed. Other dictionaries market themselves as a “student dictionary” or “concise dictionary” all the while tapping into the unprotected name of Webster to help lend credence to their product.

What this has created is the second reason for why dictionaries are essentially flawed:

The Inconsistencies of Definition

In a general sense, we’ve always accepted the “truths” that the dictionary presents. The problem with this is that the dictionary as we know is severely limited. Without realizing it we set definitions more often than a dictionary does. We do so because the definition as printed in any dictionary is done so within a vacuum. Definition must not only be analyzed in its base form, as it appears in dictionaries, but must be allowed to fluctuate in an ecosystemic structure; to change to fit its environment.

The definition of a word, though it has the ability to stand-alone and be defined, is only practical in definition when taken in context. This falls in line with Stuart Hall’s beliefs as written in his article “The Rediscovery of ‘Ideology’: Return of the Repressed in Media Studies”. In this article he states, “Definition of reality is…the active work of selecting and presenting, of structuring and shaping: not merely the transmitting of an already existing meaning, but the more active labour of making things mean.” He continues on to say, “…Things and events in the real world do not contain or propose their own integral, single, and intrinsic meaning, which is then merely transferred through language. Meaning is a social production, a practice. The world has to be made to mean.”

So how are these two things different? This can best be demonstrated through example. The dictionary definition of the word “tall” is:

“1. High in stature. 2. Of considerable height. 3. Long from bottom to top.”

While this definition works perfectly well when it stands alone, in its practical contextual use, such as in the examination of a person’s height, you need to take other conditions in to mind. If I was to say a man who was six feet in height was a tall man it may be a truthful statement, but doesn’t this change, and in effect, change the definition of the word “tall” when I place the same six foot man alongside the members of a professional basketball team? More so, doesn’t the definition of “tall” change when I compare that same man to something else, such as a skyscraper? In this case, the description, “tall” no longer applies, and in fact, the word’s complete opposite, “short” is more accurate in describing the individual.

A dictionary, while containing a wealth of information is incapable of providing a complete definition based on the contextual surrounding of a practical world. This renders a dictionary useful only for giving a guideline for words, and even then, the definitions are skewed by the lexicographer that penned it.
Words and their meanings are more practical when defined by those who use them. Take for example the word “propaganda”. According to three separate dictionaries (yet dictionaries bearing the same ‘brand’ name) propaganda is defined as:

1. Systematic spreading of ideas
2. Any widespread promotion of particular ideas, doctrines, etc.
3. Any systematic, widespread dissemination or promotion of particular ideas, doctrines, practices, etc. to further one’s own cause or to damage an opposing one.

All three of these definitions essentially define the word differently. Yet another definition, one that was created not by a lexicographer, but by two authors is recognized as an authoritative definition:

Propaganda: The deliberate systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.

While this definition is similar to the third definition presented above, it does contain differing elements, and because it is further defined in part, something that isn’t done in any modern dictionary, it can provide a more comprehensive definition. For example, the authors continue to expand the meaning by describing the words “deliberate, systematic” as, “precise and methodical, carrying out something with organized regularity”.

What all this means is that a dictionary cannot always be accepted as the absolute truth. The words of a dictionary are stagnant and unchanging; the words of our lives are pliable and ever evolving according to the situations or usefulness of change. This leads to the third reason why dictionaries are inherently flawed:

Words are evolving

To say that our language is constantly changing would be an understatement. Especially in this era, when computers have become a dominant force, whole new vocabularies, dare I say cultures, have opened up. It has been nearly impossible for lexicographers (dictionary writers) to keep up. Even as recently as the mid 80’s, words such as megabyte, Internet, and email were absent from the most highly regarded collegiate dictionaries. Today those words are used almost daily and have certainly engrained themselves into world culture yet many of the dictionaries we turn to as the authority on definition have remained the same.

Language, words and their meanings are not immune to evolution; in fact, they change constantly, oftentimes without our cognizant recognition. Words are products of human thought, as we are the only beings who have so developed a written language. While many would recognize this as great feat of intellect, it is in essence, a failure, for we have failed to completely corral our language, instead it runs free, changing and evolving without hope of us ever catching it.

There will always be attempts to bring the meaning of all words to the dictionaries, but at the speed the English language changes; it is truly a daunting task. Since Webster’s first collegiate dictionary was released in the mid 1800’s there have been ten editions published by Merriam-Webster alone. Even the venerable Oxford’s English Dictionary, “which took nearly 70 years to complete in 1928…has five supplements and then, half a century later, a second edition that integrated the first and all the subsequent supplementary volumes into one new twenty-volume whole.” Since then, two additional supplements have been written, expanding the OED from its initial thirteen volumes in 1928 to twenty-two volumes in 2000.

By falling back on a dictionary, society has made a concession to accept what is written, as fact, without even realizing that this fact is ever changing. New words come out everyday (it has been calculated that around 800 neologisms are added to the working vocabulary of the language every year.)

To complicate things further, the need to separate the vulgar, the socially unacceptable and the language of the minorities (something we’ll discuss in subsequent chapters) from dictionaries has effectively created a whole new language. This language is used everyday yet remains practically ignored by the acceptable echelon of lexicographical acceptance. Additionally, as the electronic age spreads, and we all become a bit more computer savvy, symbols and abbreviations have become commonplace in our communicative lives. We display emotions in our written language by using symbols such as :) or abbreviations such as lol to represent actions, yet rarely think about these as defined symbols, acceptable to society as the norm. They also remain absent from our dictionaries, leaving a potential void of understanding in our “perfectly defined world”.

Do these three shortcomings make dictionaries completely useless? No, far from it. In fact, understanding these flaws may make dictionaries even more useful to us. The important thing to remember is that while dictionaries may be perceived as the authority on definition, they are not. It is the human being who sets, establishes and enforces the definitions that commands this authority. A dictionary can be a great support tool, and can win an argument simply because most people do just what I’ve explained you shouldn’t do: accept definition as described in a dictionary as absolute truth. By refusing to accept dictionaries and their definitions as absolute you have been empowered. How does that feel?