It's only words

"A word means exactly what I want it to mean , neither more nor less" said Humpty Dumpty to Alice. I suppose there are times when either by design or accident we use words and phrases in a similar way to that described by Humpty Dumpty. Words are rarely neutral. They carry baggage with them. The English language is estimated to have 1 million words. Although having knowledge of 10,000 of these, most of us only use around 2,000 in normal everyday communication.

The English language is full of euphemisms, words and phrases which we use to avoid saying what is obvious. We have only to consider our vocabulary of death, so well parodied in the famous “parrot sketch” in Monty Python.

Words don’t stay still -Try talking to a techie about the Computer and you enter into a new world of bytes with no teeth , buses with no wheels mice who are not afraid of cats and surfing with no water around.

Words can be used to promote peace, but are more regularly used to create division as we know to our cost in N. Ireland – a place where even the way we pronounce certain letters  can be  used by others to stereotype us.

My favourite piece of modern technology is the Thesaurus on my Computer. I click onto a word and call up the Thesaurus for alternatives. I can choose a more flowery option if I wish to come across as knowledgeable or opt for a more popular and perhaps more understandable choice. I am rarely, however content with just one alternative, and so I begin a search for the root of my chosen word, search out antonyms and synonyms. I leave no stone unturned in my quest to find the “perfect” word for what I want to convey. So often however I feel cheated as I end up having to construct a phrase or even a sentence to get across what I have in mind as there simply isn’t a word for it!….This picture in the centre of my brain which I wish to describe. Today's picture is of the Armenian alphabet - is significant to me as I worked there for a time. It reminds me that no one has a monopoly on meaning and there are many ways in which we try and explain what we mean - all of which are limited by the language we speak. Words are important, but more important is that we speak them with integrity and generosity.