I’m here at Panera, using their free wireless at speeds that can only be described as reasonable. Looking around, I see no one else using a laptop, so I can’t help but wonder what the cost/benefit ratio is for their internet venture. Presumably at other store locations it gets wider use, or else they would have stopped by now. Or maybe they’re just such good people that they’re working toward Wi-Fi cities.

However, that is only the prelude to today’s post, it really has nothing to do with the topic except to provide you with a context for understanding the location from which I write, which as we will see in a moment, is utterly important for your absorption of the meaning of my words.

So let me start, then, with a bit of background. There is some guy living in my house right now. He has a friend who always says, “You’re awesome.” However, this friend of the guy uses it in many situations, and the phrase can mean, variously, “Well done”, “Way to go”, “Smooth move, Exlax”, or “You’re such an idiot”. As you can see, these run the gamut of possible meanings, only a handful of which are related in some way to the actual words expressed. At this point in the conversation we were having, I came up with the following idea, part or all of which may be bunk.

Meaning is derived from context. This you already knew. However, I think that the dictionary definition of a particular word is becoming increasingly difficult to set, because our culture is becoming (or already is) a global, media-centric one. What do I mean? The meaning of a popular, widely-used word or phrase is becoming more and more connotative and less and less denotative. Obviously a connotative idea can only be given meaning by assuming that your audience has the same (or at least similar) set of background experiences, ideas, and values (culture). Because our world is more connected than ever before, with things like television, movies, radio, popular music, and especially the internet, the culture of the various connected communities begins to converge, since information flow is fast. So you have a much, much larger audience that is now sharing the same culture (the new, global one). Because you can reach so many people who all share the same ideas, you can begin to imply more things rather than actually saying them, and know that your meaning will be mostly interpreted correctly in the same context as you intended. This leads to, again, loss of the capability for a dictionary definition, because so much of the meaning is cultural context.

“Yes, Stormy, but what’s the impact of this?” Nothing. It’s just an observation, an applied thought resulting in an idea. Now, perhaps what I have just described is something that intelligent people already knew, and it’s nothing new. We already know that language evolves and changes over time. That’s why we have the word archaic. As an example, think of the word “gay”. Think of its meaning today versus its meaning sixty years ago. Think of the word “sucks”. Think of the word “wicked”. Think of the word “awesome”. Certainly this delves into the realm of slang, but applied to the idea of a global culture for interpretation of context, and the speed with which ideas now travel, slang quickly passes from colloquial to mainstream.

To visualize this, think of, say, the year 1600. People are very far apart, culturally, because information travel is exceedingly slow. It takes weeks for an idea to begin to trickle from one place to another, and years for it to become a torrent because a) life is hard and most time is spent just surviving, and b) you have to ride a horse from place to place, which is slow and dangerous.. Today, on the internet (and the associated media), it takes hours for a trickle and days for a torrent.

My meaning here may not be perfectly clear, as the idea I’m trying to convey is sufficiently complex and concrete to prevent implied meaning. But think of the phrase “You’re awesome”. Its meaning is almost entirely derived from the context within which it is used (duh, everything is), but the super-context, the culture, is that global, media-centric one which I’ve just been talking about.

The end result of all this is that language evolves faster than ever to the point where the actual words used in a situation become meaningless, as actual meaning comes entirely from the context and underlying culture.

Well, what do you think? Am I off my rocker with this observation? Does my idea hold some measure of validity? Is my meaning even clear?

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 8th, 2004 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.