Throughout my life, from a very young age, and for as long as I can remember, I have been struck by the liveliness and power of language. How almost magical it is when old words evolve or when new ones appear and cement themselves into the world: viral, prompt engineer, or algorithm; and Brexit, woke, or ghosting, for example. I have always been fascinated by how people misunderstand or deliberately reinterpret the things other people say. In their responses, as a youngster, I would notice adults transforming – sometimes consciously, sometimes less so – the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences, and comprehending them in ways that seemed quite alien, even shocking, to me. Perhaps it was naiveté, perhaps it was literalism, perhaps I just think a little differently, but I would marvel at how often warped (from my point of view) understandings became folded into an accepted narrative about what had just occurred. I was also frequently struck by how quickly possibilities and potentials disappeared beneath the surface.
Later, I learned that people sometimes engineer this process while arguing, deliberately setting out to confuse by being obtuse or speaking very quietly, or by wilfully misrepresenting what was said. However, at other times, I realised, it is simply because the receiver genuinely (mis)understands what is meant, as they approach the meaning from behind a different lens, perhaps based on location, experience, or even mood.
Misreadings can be banal. My son was asked to write down ‘1 to 10’ in an assessment for dyspraxia when he was young. He wrote ‘1, 2, 10’. In another example, a photography tutor from another part of the country once referred to my studio practice, as opposed to some other form of work I was doing at the time. It was early in my image-related career and I was confused as I did not work from a physical studio, although I did have clients who paid me for photographing headshots, family portraits and events. I eventually realised that the tutor was referring to what I called my commercial practice. This example seems like a minor misrecognition, but the implications as these small slippages ripple and expand, potentially lead to total communication breakdown. Perhaps even a world in which people using exactly the same words lose the ability to understand each other at all. When this happens, fear, suspicion and animosity may set in. Is this, I wonder, some of what has happened over the last twenty years on social media?
There is likely a good deal more to the upheaval of a common ground that informs the hyperpolarisation we must all contend with. Nevertheless, there is a revolution currently taking place inside language as words and categories that seemed so certain for decades, if not centuries, are influenced by the contemporary fluid media in which they so often find themselves today, and where the production and legitimisation of meaning has been opened up to many more people than ever before. The most obvious and contentious of these this past decade or so may have been words around gender. But many other terms are up for redefinition as we face a future in which our media speaks back to us using natural language processing – a collection of symbols and signs which I’ve found so magical my whole life – and can seemingly do things we could not even dream of not so very long ago (except maybe in science-fiction stories); intelligence, smart, generative, and thinking are just a few.
And so, as mentioned in the previous post, I will keep a lexicon on this website, which aims to collate varied and creative responses to the situation in which we find ourselves, and where the battle for a future occurs within and through language. It is one small attempt to tend to the confusions we face – to find a way of sitting with them, no matter how awkward, to gather definitions that are honest about instability, and which approach language as something living rather than settled. And, of course, to maintain potentials, possibilities and hope within our grasp. It is not about fixing meaning, policing usage, or instilling dogma. It is not, I hope, about closing down meaning. And perhaps it’s simply motivated by the same fascination with language – its power and slipperiness – that I experienced as a six-year-old.
I will gradually add to the lexicon as part of my regular blog writing. Contributions from others are very welcome.
The lexicon will be added to the menu system shortly. In the meantime, a form for suggested additions can be found here.