Noah
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Joined: 7/5/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: KnightofMists
communication is a stange thing. We have a variety of ways to communicate but how often are we saying things in a slang or lazy way.. but yet it is understood. Meaning... the person we are speaking to understands and we recieve the response we were looking for. This just doesn't happen with our long term partners but complete strangers as well
for example.... a few days ago as I was consider my thoughts on communication as I was eating my dinner at a restaurant it hit me that I just ask for something from the waitress that didn't result in what I actually stated but did result in what I actually meant.
I stated "Could I get a glass of water please?"
what I stated actually required me to go and get the water... but in fact what I meant was
'Could you get me a glass of water please?' Which is exactly what occurred... the waitress brought me a glass of water.
It dawned on me that the context/situation we are in will have a significant impact on how we interpert what is said. That we can actually be rather sloppy in what we say... but our specific situation allows us to get away with this type of sloppy communicating.
I doubt that we disagree about much of consequence here, Knight. Still I'd like to hold this up to be viewed from a slightly different angle.
In the first place I don't see anything even a little bit strange in your anecdote. It is all perfectly familiar. It does strike me as odd that someone would note a communication transaction of a sort that is as common as dirt, employing perfectly conventional expressions, and find the fact that it all works just fine to be strange. What could be less strange than indicating to a waitress with a perfectly common expression that you desire some water, and then getting it?
You said: "...what I stated actually required me to go and get the water." and this really threw me. Required? In the first place that word looks completely out of place. When you "get" something in the mail from L.L.Bean does it mean that you went to their wharehouse yourself and carried the package of socks to your own mailbox? No. Of course not. Because the word "get" means different things in different contexts. A crucial part of just being a minimally competent speaker of English is the knowledge that this is so. This isn't a strange thing about language, unless the notion that the numeral 3 can represent a quantity of fish OR a quantity of fowl is an odd thing about mathematics.
What you said in your anecdote, as I read it, indicated that you desired some water. Meanwhile the whole situation embodied an acknowledgement on the part of all concerned that desires of this type on the part of people in your position are the reason the waitress gets a chance to put on her shoes and come to work.
I mean, wasn't your waitress's response the least strange response we can think to such an utterance by you?
It was mentioned in a recent definitions thread that there exists in some people's minds this quaint but groundless notion that words have a sort of divinely-given singular meaning and that's that. It is as though people agree to be dommed by the language they use rather than mastering that language instead.
Just looking around and listening shows that, of course the meaning of any utterance is dependent on lots of things--as you go on to indicate.
Is this next utterance an in-joke between you and your best friend? If you choose to say it and he "gets" it, does that make you lazy because you didn't instead use the most commonly undrstandable form of expression for the task at hand?
Is this next utterenace an expression well understood in your social circle but not elsewhere? If so is it lazy to use the expression instead of some other more generally understood one?
Is this next utterance an expression which would be taken matter-of-factly in a business setting but taken as harsh if uttered at a funeral service? We acknowledge context and we proceed. I think the Holy Grail would be much easier to find than a set of expressions which would work with perfect clarity regardless of considerations of context.
Is this next uttereance an expression which perhaps no human being has ever uttered but which will indeed almost certainly make it clear to the waitress that you desire some water, and might it put a little smile on her face as well? If so I say go for it if you're in the mood and sense that she likely is too.
If language has one primary set of meanings which anyone aspiring to be non-lazy must honor every time they open their mouth, well which set of meanings can it be?
When we say that dictionaries report the meanings of words, this is short-hand for saying that dictionaries report the ways in which people actually use language. When usages change, dictionary editors scurry to keep up. The dictionary is an archive of usages, not a repository of sacred, immutable meanings.
This isn't some wooly relativism. It is absolutely the case that the meanings of words arise in their use.
And as mutable as words are, string them into expressions and the mutability expands exponentially. That is just the way things stand.
Yes, language is multi-colored and various. The very same piece of language looks different when viewed in different lights. I can't think of a thing that is more basic or fundamental to language as people actually use it--as opposed to some sterile, vain vision of how speech should be. This mutability can be viewed as a detriment only by a peculiar twist of mind, as it seems to me, comparable to viewing mortality as a peculiar thing about human beings. What could be less peculiar?
It seems to me that any being--no matter how much it resembled a person in other ways, could never be considered human if it were not mortal. He might be terrible or he might be wonderful but he would be something else than human. No more could any language that wasn't highly mutable and context dependent be seen as a human language by someone who attends to and appreciates the multi-faceted beauty of language in action, as it seems to me.
Language can be used in all sorts of ways. There are a hundred ways to request some water from a waitress. To deem any one except: "Could you get me a glass of water please?" (or extremely close analogs of that) to be erroneous, lazy, or otherwise deficient strikes me as very far-fetched. Some might be. Others wouldn't.
Out to brunch with your granny and great-aunt you might lean conspiratorially towards the waitress and offer in an Irish whisper: "Honestly, one of us had better remain sober for a change. You don't serve {distasteful grimace} water here, do you?" And I'll bet you'd get a glass of water in response. For anyone who found charm in this little joke, part of the charm wuld arise in the way that the simple request is hidden in a layer or two of misdirection and yet by the end everything is made clear enough, but not, you know, gratuitously clear.
I'll bet that twenty guys asked that waitress for water that day with the same expression you used, and each got his water with no fuss. I'll bet another twenty instead used your "preferred" form of request and got theor water too. Nothing in your posts suggests that you would disagree. If that is the case it makes no sense to me to call you and those first nineteen guys lazy and give approbation instead to those who chose an alternate--and equally (but no more) effective--form for their request.
The finest example I have ever heard of a man making a request of a woman came from Lyle Lovett, ever-so-soulfully delivered in his song "Here I Am." I think it is very important to share it here for those who haven't had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Lovett in concert or on record:
ok
I understand too little too late.
I realize there are things you say and do
You can never take back.
But what would you be if you didn't even try?
You have to try.
So after a lot of thought
I'd like to reconsider.
Please--
If it's not too late--
Could you make it a
Cheeeeeeseburger?
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/lovett-lyle/here-i-am-1045.html
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RE: Is what we say actually what we mean? - 
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