There's a word for that.

[fflo]

Maybe what I've got is a vocabulary problem.

I was just looking up "tautological" to see if it had any special meaning in mathematics, and thinking how learning words like that sometimes, with the "There's a name for that phenomenon" aspect, make meaning gel or crystalize or solidify or what-you-will. Meaning is only metaphors and assigned associations, after all. Oh, maybe it's more than that, and a logician or linguist or neuroscientist or psychologist could flesh out the subject for me nicely. But none of them are around at the moment, anyway. It's just me and the insufficiently strong coffee.

But learning the names for rhetorical devices, fer instance, can turn you on to when a rhetorical device is being used on your ass. You know?

I don't know what I'm talking about. It's not exactly what things mean that I can't get at; it's what I feel about them. Or is that the same thing? How can you think about anything at all, the way doing so at all thoroughly makes it one big swirling mess of nothing? Is it wiser not to think about anything much, or to think only a tiny bit, in a flip, cursory way, unless the problem at hand is something like how to build a suspension bridge or a better mousetrap or something so superbly grounded in the physical?

I am now ready to accept your awards for Most Vapid Entry On My Friends Page Today.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

It is what it is.

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

Here's a pretty interesting article I found that touches on denotative vs. connotative meanings of words: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem06.html

I rather like the notion that there is no such thing as a synonym, since every word has a slightly different connotation from every other word, even if the denotative definitions are the same.

Basically, it gives me an excuse to use profanity that my mom can't argue with.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

But learning the names for rhetorical devices, fer instance, can turn you on to when a rhetorical device is being used on your ass. You know?

Straw man! Straw man! Everywhere in politics for as lomg as I've paid attention, even before I learned the term, I could apply it retroactively, it's been straw man, straw man, straw man. Yes. Back in the mid-1980's it was good to learn a term to hang what had been a growing pet peeve of mine.

[paperkingdoms]

I was talking with someone a while back about the sensation of losing one's words, or not being able to find words for things. And for as frustrating as that can be, we also talked about how sometimes finding words for things changes the things you've found words for - either because they drag all their associations along with them, or because the words aren't *quite* right, but you grab for them anyway, and deciding on those words changes the underlying Thing.

So... that's what this reminded me of. ;^)