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When one might believe that his meaning of a word can be mistaken, there are ways, useful in speaking and writing, of making certain that the meaning he intends is what is communicated. It is not good enough to simply assume that as all words are cloudy anyway, no one person can ever really understand what another person really means (although that argument was once advanced to excuse lack of definition).
To express one’s thoughts and emotions without the benefit of extensive vocabulary is difficult. A person with a small vocabulary of words is a sort of communication pauper. He often finds himself bankrupt in trying to say what he really means, and this can add difficulty to his life. An omission of expression dams up the normal flows of interpersonal relations. This even can become a fad in itself. As the working vocabularies of college students in the 1960s and 1970s sank, they began to affect a hesitant and indefinite manner of speaking. Unfortunately such can be accompanied by a diffident regard for life itself, and it can result in a bewildered world where no one seems sure of anything.
One need not surrender all the majesty of thought and language. One need only be understandable. The modern politician has sought to look, speak and write like one of the “masses” he is seeking to reach. In doing this he unfortunately has sacrificed his imposingness and thus his command position. The task is to sound effective and even poetic while using very simple words. Abraham Lincoln, the great American president of the nineteenth century, who imposingly led the crusade and war to free the slaves, had this gift. A schoolchild today can easily read his speeches with a thrill.
In order to say something, one should have something to say.
To speak or write simply, the first step is to decide upon one’s message. And the second step is to phrase it so that it communicates to the person or persons one is addressing with a minimum of potential misunderstanding of words.
Probably there are many as yet undeveloped methods and systems of clarifying what the words one is using mean. The Japanese have one: their writing is in Chinese characters, but in the upper right-hand corner they put small symbols which give the Japanese pronunciation. Japanese words are very homonymic: same sounds mean many things. When two Japanese find themselves in an argument over meaning, it is not uncommon for one to whip out a notebook and pen and draw the Chinese character for the other. The sound of the word did not define it; the full written character did. And so they resolve their definition differences.
Possibly one could put an asterisk or other symbol after an unusual word and define it at the bottom of the page – it would certainly save many trips to a dictionary. Such systems are mainly lacking in English and European languages. But the development and adaption of some would considerably ease the flow of communication by introducing exact definitions of the meanings meant. Such languages also suffer from being homonymic. Any lawyer can tell you that the courts are full of suits stemming from contract words that were not properly defined. Courts are a war of sorts, and a dominant skill in a lawyer is phrasing. Where this fails, suits can result. It all comes under the heading of the definition of words.
Words also have emotional associations, aside from cold dictionary meanings. The propagandist, ad copywriter, public relations man often have, (or should have), a command of this aspect of words. But there is no dictionary devoted to the cataloging of such connections. They are in public use. They change, decade to decade. They have periods of being good and periods of being bad. Once “fascist” was a commendable designation, but is now a dirty word. “Profit” was once praiseworthy, but has become questionable. In choosing words, one has to have some idea of their current emotional association as well as their pure definitions. The understanding of one’s hearer or reader is colored by the emotional association of some of the words one uses.
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