{"id":719,"date":"2010-07-09T18:44:43","date_gmt":"2010-07-09T22:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/?p=719"},"modified":"2010-07-09T18:44:43","modified_gmt":"2010-07-09T22:44:43","slug":"ive-been-using-the-word-misrepresented-a-lot-lately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/2010\/07\/09\/ive-been-using-the-word-misrepresented-a-lot-lately\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ve Been Using the Word “Misrepresented” a Lot Lately…"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my most recent essays in this blog (an entry titled “General Semantics: The Study of How We Represent Our Experiences”<\/a>) did a number on me.\u00a0 It started to get me focused on how people (others as well as myself) represent their experiences in words.\u00a0 And it got me paying attention especially to how frequently people (others, though not so much myself) mis<\/em>represent their experiences in words.<\/p>\n

It was as if general semantics developed as a door wedge.<\/p>\n

That probably doesn’t make sense to you, but it makes sense to me.\u00a0 General semantics got people paying attention to the words\u00a0they use to represent reality.\u00a0 And as a result, it tuned people into times when, say,\u00a0they don’t<\/em> represent reality well with their words.\u00a0 There’s the\u00a0precise sense of representation–as when a scientist represents reality with dispassionate, structurally correct words–but there’s also the less precise, more\u00a0social sense of representation–as when you or I chat.<\/p>\n

In truth, people do a lot of misrepresenting.<\/p>\n

‘<\/span><\/div>

(Nice pun!)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes our plight is to show that someone is lying.\u00a0 That plight can be a bit\u00a0too challenging\u00a0because it is hard to prove that someone’s intent was to misrepresent.\u00a0 Sometimes, it would seem to me, that just showing misrepresentation is enough.\u00a0 That is, if you can demonstrate that someone is misrepresenting reality, that may be enough to damn a person.<\/p>\n

You might not need to show the intent to misrepresent, as implied by the term “lying.”\u00a0 You might just need to show the misrepresenter the facts, then see if she corrects her speech to speech that better represents facts.\u00a0 If she keeps misrepresenting, you may see the problem the person is.\u00a0 Misrepresentation may be a liability, enough to can someone who does it whether actively or neglectfully.<\/p>\n

And we can do it innocently, as when we do it accidentally or na\u00efvely.\u00a0 Who knows how I’ve misrepresented myself out of na\u00efvet\u00e9.\u00a0 When I catch myself misrepresenting events accidentally, oftentimes I aim to correct the error.\u00a0 I might even do that months later to the person who heard my erroneous words.<\/p>\n

But it is as if general semantics developed as a door wedge.\u00a0 It jammed in people’s brains so that they didn’t just let\u00a0themselves close them on events just because of how the events\u00a0were represented in words.\u00a0\u00a0 General semantics kept the doorbrain open to possibilities other than those represented, or potentially mis<\/em>represented, in words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my most recent essays in this blog (an entry titled “General Semantics: The Study of How We Represent Our Experiences”) did a number on me.\u00a0 It started to get me focused on how people (others as well as myself) represent their experiences in words.\u00a0 And it got me paying attention especially to how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[84,83,82],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-semantics","tag-lying","tag-misrepresentation","tag-representation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":730,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}