Generally, a larger vocabulary means a greater chance of
life success. A larger vocabulary gives us access to aspects of life that we
would not understand or appreciate without it. This was pointed out by E.D.
Hirsch, Jr, in his fine article, “A Wealth of Words,” in which he states that
“Studies have solidly established the correlation between vocabulary and
real-world ability.” (City Journal, Winter, 2013). Both communicating with
others and thinking can be enhanced with a greater vocabulary.
In a sense a vocabulary is a set of “facts,” learned
associations between a word or words and something. The latter could be
abstract, as in love, or it could be tangible, as in my grey car. Some K-12 educators
disparage facts, but the problem is that we can hardly think critically, or creatively,
about something if we have no facts about it. We may not even be able to think
at all. If I want to have a quality conversation with someone about the novel Moby Dick, I need a vocabulary of
literary methods, like plot, style, characterization, and metaphor. Failing
that, I resort to subjective sensations or opinions which add nothing
substantive to the conversation. I may say something like, “I don’t like Ahab”
or “whale hunting is bad.” No subtlety or critical analysis. Definitely my
right to have those views and to articulate them, but I should not confuse such
statements with thinking or having a substantive conversation.
A vocabulary is more than simply a bunch of words---it is
words that have meaning and can be applied in real-life situations to
understand and think better. My ability to converse well or think about interior
design, for example, depends greatly on my color vocabulary. If I have words
for relatively few colors, my advice to clients will be compromised by my
limited understanding, and I will be at sea in a conversation with other interior
designers. I will be unable to follow the images and ideas discussed as they
use terms reflecting color subtleties and nuances I do not understand. The same
would happen in any situation in which my vocabulary does not approximate the
other person’s. Vocabulary represents knowledge, an understanding about the
world at a certain level and in a given area. The less extensive a person’s
vocabulary, the more constrained his world view on that subject.
Whether it’s about a novel or colors, how to fix a car or
program software, the more words we have of describing something, the more
sophistication and depth we can bring to a conversation, or even to survival.
The Sami people, who live in northern Scandinavia, have as many as 180 words
relating to snow and ice, according to the Washington Post. Inuit in Northern
Canada have been hunting seals for thousands of years, relying solely on their
ability to interpret fine differences in snow and ice to navigate. Elder
hunters passed on this knowledge to younger ones. Today those younger hunters
often use GPS systems for navigation. Reliance on this technology has meant the
loss of skill to navigate as the elders did, occasionally resulting in the
death of a younger hunter when his GPS system failed. As the language and of
snow and ice fell away, the skills went with it, and so did an important
understanding of the environment. For the younger hunters this meant that their
world expanded in one way (the vocabulary of GPS) and contracted in another
(the vocabulary of snow and ice).
Ludwig Wittgenstein makes a strong point about language---“The
limits of my language means the limits of my world.” My world is constrained by
a limited vocabulary, just as it is by boundaries of my ability to use language
in general effectively. Of course, there are lots of areas where extensive
vocabulary is not needed. Not being interested in them, I don’t need much of a
sailing or wood-working vocabulary. Also, intuition offers understanding or
insights not easily explainable to others. With intuition, literal facts are
often unimportant or non-existent. Intuitive “hits” arrive in a totally
different mode than normal language and facts can account for. Intuition is
another way of knowing not easy to communicate to others. Still, if we wish to
convey to someone our intuitive understandings, we need a precise enough
vocabulary to effectively communicate something about the experience, even if
we can only offer the context or flavor.
As valuable as extensive vocabularies can be, they are of
little benefit if not used. When under the stress of adversarial conflict, our
vocabularies and understanding contract as fear and reactivity push us to respond
to the threat. The words and affect we use reflect the need to defend or
attack, not to converse. We might imagine we are thinking and conversing because
we trot out our existing litany of powerfully-held opinions, but we are simply
emoting. The opinions are held as unassailable truths, and brook no opposition.
There is one goal---to win, prevail, or overcome, to void the threat. It
definitely is not to understand, nor is it to think. As the very insightful
philosopher/longshoreman Eric Hoffer once said,
We are least
open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
