Jim wrote:
'The Humpty-Dumpty rule. "When I use a word it means
precisely what I want it to mean. No more, no less."
'Here's the thing, Mark. When Lewis Carroll put those words
into Humpty-Dumpty's mouth, he meant it to be a DEBUNKING of
that attitude.'
However, in satirizing the shifting definitions of words,
Carroll was acknowledging the phenomenon. There's no need to
debunk that which does not exist.
Furthermore, are you seriously claiming that the meanings of
words do not change? Leaving aside whether or not you think
they should, are you actually arguing they don't? The
meanings of words are social constructions. As cultures
change, so do the meanings of some words. Take, for example,
the labels we use for race. According to Randall Kennedy's
book on the subject, in the 1600s, the "N word" was not at
all pejorative. Derived from the Latin word for the color
black, it was simply the word used to describe the race of
natives of Africa. However, I doubt that arguing that that
was the word's original meaning would excuse the use of that
word today. The history of racial relations in the US has
added a whole lot of other shadings to that word. The
denotation has remained constant, but as the culture has
changed, so has the connotation of that word.
This is just one example.
Mark
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