Vocabulary and The Limits to Our World

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Generally speaking, a greater vocabulary means a greater chance of life success, in whatever arena---car repair as much as research science. 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).

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 educators disparage facts, meaning in one sense they disparage vocabulary. But we can hardly think critically or creatively about something if we have no facts regarding it. In the worst case, we may not be able to think about it at all.

If I want to have a quality conversation with someone about the novel Moby Dick, I need at least a minimum vocabulary of literary methods, like plot, characterization, and metaphor. Failing that, I resort to subjective sensations or simple opinions: “I don’t like Ahab” or “Whale hunting is bad.” Such subjectivity and opinionating can certainly lead to a fun conversation with two people of like disposition, or to a potentially hostile interaction when there is not a similar mindset. Either way, most of us engage in them from time to time.

But we cannot confuse that type of exchange with a one having substance and subtlety. Opinionating is easy. Thoughtful conversation is not. In social arenas like politics, where substance matters, we are seeing people resort more and more to easy opinions lacking any subtlety or sound back-up. If “facts” are used, they are biased ones that will provide the outcome desired. It seems as though some people imagine that simple opinions, often held in a death-like grip and bolstered with great emotion, are equivalent to quality thinking. A bad sign for healthy societal outcomes, as is evident today. How can we have in-depth conversations about important social or ethical issues if we have lost, or choose not to use, vocabularies reflecting the complexity of such issues?

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 function in the world better. My ability to converse well about interior design, for example, depends greatly on my color vocabulary. If I am an interior designer and have words for relatively few colors, 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 subtleties and nuances that I cannot appreciate. With my interior design clients, for as long as I might have them, I will be able to offer them advice only on an extremely limited spectrum.

A vocabulary represents knowledge, an understanding about the world at a certain level. Whether it’s about a novel or colors, how to plumb a sink or program software, the more words we have of describing or understanding something, the more sophistication and depth of knowledge we can bring to a conversation, a task, or even to survival. The Sami people, who live in northern Scandinavia, may 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, for which they had an extensive vocabulary. Older hunters once 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 of snow and ice fell away, the skills went with it. 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).

When I was an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley in the 60’s the word “cool” was ubiquitous, and most of us thought we knew what it meant. I once asked a friend what he meant in saying that another fellow’s attire was cool. His response was pure 60’s Berkeley---“Well, you know, it’s just cool.” But other friends possessed a greater sense of the word’s meaning. Some of those included approval, a generalized satisfaction with or an appreciation of something or someone, a recognition of quality, or even of someone’s insouciance. Conversations were more expansive because of this fuller vocabulary.

Of course, when using “cool” in a general sense, we all understood what was meant, or at least something close to it. An elaborate discussion of further meanings was not needed in many settings. Rather than having a specific meaning, the word represented social glue, as though by using the word we were all part of something larger than ourselves that only we understood. It was a bonding mechanism, and not an intellectual exchange of information and ideas.

The above examples illustrate Wittgenstein’s point. The world is constrained by a person’s vocabulary, and by the willingness to use it, just as it is by the boundaries of a person’s ability to use language effectively in speaking and listening.

Life success, in the expansive meaning of the term, is not necessarily a function of high education or a given level of intellectual ability, nor of the vocabularies associated with those. It is a function of having extensive enough vocabularies in critical areas of interest to us, whether we are accountants or TV repairmen. We all choose, consciously or unconsciously, what areas deserve our attention, and we adopt vocabularies suitable to those. And no matter what those areas are, greater vocabularies generally improve our chances of greater overall life success.