Who should get to decide the usage of a word?

[Lewkowski]

Lewk, I'll bite. I think a lot of debates revolve around semantics - not that they are unimportant, but that they require a common set of agreed terms to appropriately discuss the underlying issue. But the issue is that semantics are not like facts that we can actually always come to an agreement about. These are often complex value judgments that are contextual. Sometimes the debate isn't about an issue at all, the debate is about an idea that we are assigning to a word. Trying to make some sort of blanket rule about how words should be used misses the point, it just shifts the debate elsewhere.

One of the best gifts humans have is language, and the ability to put words to extremely complex, abstract concepts. The challenge, of course, is figuring out how to communicate these abstractions to our fellow humans and come to some sort of agreement on how our society should work. That's why we have debates. Language is not mathematics or dictionaries or even completely subjective. It's a living entity that we create and modify every day based on complex subtext and cultural interplay. Let's try not to be too prescriptive in its application.

Fair enough, however I'd ask you two questions.

1. Do you think discussions that devolve into arguing about the definitions of words are productive and/or do they occur too frequently?

2. If you answered yes to the above question - how would you solve the problem?

[wiggin]

Fair enough, however I'd ask you two questions.

1. Do you think discussions that devolve into arguing about the definitions of words are productive and/or do they occur too frequently?

2. If you answered yes to the above question - how would you solve the problem?

I think that discussions that boil down to people just using the same word differently are obviously pointless if the word isn't the real question. I.e. debating 'is socialism bad' is pointless if both people can't agree on a definition of socialism. You end up with all sorts of 'no true Scotsman' type of arguments and the sooner everyone agrees on what they're arguing about, the better. But debates where the definition of the term is central to the very topic being discussed - 'is the EU a democracy?' - are fantastic ways to explore how we define these complex and abstract concepts - and often, it allows us to realize that we actually agree on a great deal but have different perspectives on the same fundamental reality.