{"id":970,"date":"2010-12-20T06:54:53","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T11:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/?p=970"},"modified":"2010-12-20T06:54:53","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T11:54:53","slug":"a-case-to-be-made-language-by-its-nature-is-generic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/2010\/12\/20\/a-case-to-be-made-language-by-its-nature-is-generic\/","title":{"rendered":"A Case to Be Made: Language, by Its Nature, Is Generic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I hope to make a case over the next few posts to this blog that <em>language, by its nature, is generic<\/em>.\u00a0 With respect to general semantics, this is a rival perspective to the notion that <em>language, by its nature, is abstract<\/em>.\u00a0 I aim to show that &#8220;generic&#8221; is a better, more constructive term than &#8220;abstract&#8221; when talking about language in general semantics.<\/p>\n<p>Some points I aim to discuss:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Language is generic.\u00a0 Its referent is always specific (relative to language).<\/li>\n<li>To understand what it means to be generic, look to prescription drugs and their counterpart generic drugs.\u00a0 What does &#8220;generic&#8221; mean in this case?\u00a0 Generic means &#8220;lacking a quality,&#8221; in this case, a name brand.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Language never represents as many qualities as its referent has.\u00a0 More specifically, never does <em>all<\/em> of the referent&#8217;s qualities come to mind when its language is invoked.\u00a0 The word &#8220;circle&#8221; stands for a specific figure, and with that figure comes a lot of qualities, but the word is less specific than the actual figure.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Generic&#8221; is a better descriptor of language than &#8220;abstract&#8221; because &#8220;abstract&#8221; has a number of meanings that can make the concept of abstraction somewhat confusing.\u00a0 Sometimes the word &#8220;abstraction&#8221; is used almost like a synonym for &#8220;extraction,&#8221; or perhaps <em>should<\/em> be.\u00a0 But with Korzybski&#8217;s emphasis on the reduction of characteristics represented by each stage of the abstracting process as shown in his model, the Structural Differential, language is shown not so much to become more abstract but more generic.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Generic&#8221; may also apply in Hayakawa&#8217;s model, the Abstraction Ladder.\u00a0 In that model, words can be seen in some respect as collections, and as a result, more abstract than the items in those collections, which are less abstract words.<\/li>\n<li>Truth and being generic are related.\u00a0 Truthful statements maintain their truth insofar as they are generic.\u00a0 Some statements, when made more specific, become untrue.\u00a0 Take for instance, the statement &#8220;He was killed.&#8221;\u00a0 That is a (relatively)\u00a0generic statement.\u00a0 You might call out the passive formulation of that sentence, and attempt to reformulate it into an active voice.\u00a0 You might try to write, &#8220;She killed him,&#8221; but then, by assuming <em>someone<\/em> killed him, you may make an untrue statement, especially if it wasn&#8217;t a person that killed him, but a rolling boulder.<\/li>\n<li>In order to become specific, we use terms.\u00a0 Terms are means for improving specificity.\u00a0 &#8220;Are you happy?&#8221;\u00a0 &#8220;Happy how?&#8221;\u00a0 &#8220;Happy in terms of your relationship.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>We consciously or unconsciously select our terms.\u00a0 That is, there is choice involved in selecting terms.\u00a0 We can tip a discussion in different ways based on how we define our generic language.\u00a0 We can talk of freedom &#8220;in terms of speech,&#8221; freedom in terms of &#8220;privacy,&#8221; freedom in terms of &#8220;the press,&#8221; etc.\u00a0 Each of those is a different discussion; however, generically, they are all discussions about freedom.<\/li>\n<li>In terms of critical thinking, we need to become aware that people can focus generic conversation around a selection of terms which may limit conversation needlessly and persuasively.\u00a0 A political party may force conversation about\u00a0marriage (generic term) in terms of sanctity (more specific term), and sanctity (now a relatively generic term) in terms of Western religion.\u00a0 But another political party may focus the conversation about marriage (generic term) in terms of rights (more specific), and rights (now a relatively generic terms) in terms of what&#8217;s-outlined-in-the-Constitution.\u00a0 Terms specify discussion, but there potentially\u00a0is no absolute way of specifying a discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those are the sketches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I hope to make a case over the next few posts to this blog that language, by its nature, is generic.\u00a0 With respect to general semantics, this is a rival perspective to the notion that language, by its nature, is abstract.\u00a0 I aim to show that &#8220;generic&#8221; is a better, more constructive term than &#8220;abstract&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/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":[128,236],"class_list":["post-970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-semantics","tag-generic-terms","tag-language-as-generic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970","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=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}