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The Supreme Court has handed down a very interesting ruling in Roper v. Simmons - http://scotus.ap.org/scotus/03-633p.zo.pdf- which has drawn an almost apoplectic dissenting opinion from Scalia: http://scotus.ap.org/scotus/03-633p.zd1.pdfI would certainly take issue with his maths, since he does not seem (in his discussion of Amish views of motor cars) to have the faintest understanding of the principles of sets and Venn drivers! I would also take exception to the thinly-veiled xenophobia evident in his distaste for the views held by the international family of which America is a member. However, the central question he raises is one that might interest this language board: to what extent does our use of language have a fixed and certain meaning? “The prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, like other expansive language in the Constitution, must be interpreted according to its text, by considering history, tradition, and precedent, and with due regard for its purpose and function in the constitutional design. To implement this framework we have established the propriety and affirmed the necessity of referring to the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society to determine which punishments are so disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual.” (Kennedy plurality) “the concept of law ordinarily signifies that particular words have a fixed meaning. Such law does not change…” (Scalia’s dissent)
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The question posed by Maverick...
"...to what extent does our use of language have a fixed and certain meaning?"
...is the most important question of out time.
And I think that our very survival as a vibrant evolutionary force depends on our ability to resolve a functional answer.
The short answer is "NO!" .
But, of course, some meanings can be better "fixed" in meaning than others.
But no meaning of any word, or of any groups of words can have a meaning that is absolute.
Such is the nature of words.
Anyone here who thinks otherwise should turn in their
Tom Corbett Space Cadet Language Decoder Ring and slink off in shame because they know not well of what that they think.
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Pooh-Bah
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The fixed meaning of language is the product of desired outcome. [/scalia subtext]
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Scalia has ambitions - he sees himself as chief candidate to replace Rhenquist when that worthy pops his clogs, which is likely to be sooner rather than later. But Scalia has a number of views which, while they may strike a chord with the current Administration, will be seen as anathema to many Americans, I am sure: http://www.vermontguardian.com/national/0904/1203national-roun.shtmlSo the words he discusses will certainly be seen to him as meaning precisely what he wants them to mean. Neither more nor less, as someone once said ... 
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Every Supreme Court session opens with the cry, “God save the United States!” yeah, with Scalia at work...
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...You boys don't want to talk "words" do you, you boys want to talk US partisan politics and bash Scalia. Sounds like fun, but people here get mad if I talk politics here so please excuse me if I sit this bashing out. Shoot! I miss all the fun. 
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...You boys don't want to talk "words" do you, you boys want to talk US partisan politics and bash Scalia.
Sounds like fun, but people here get mad if I talk politics here so please excuse me if I sit this bashing out.
Shoot! I miss all the fun.
I have to say, Milo, that on one level you do have a point [shaking forefinger at the offenders e]; however, upon thinking a little deeper I must also say that there is a big difference between stating honest opinion and deliberately trying to incite.
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Do you think we should be using orange font so close to St. Pat's Day?
Beidh an t-ath ort! (may luck be with you)
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Well then, Jackie, perhaps you will suggest a way that I could have otherwise opined my point without enlisting these grown men to incite.
Men, I think, thank God, are made of sterner stuff.
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> bash Scalia
Actually I don't Milo. Although I may have, heh, reservations about the man and his politics, of course being a perfick gennulman I would have to refrain from casting any aspersions in these hallowed grounds ;)
No, my question was cast quite carefully because although I personally would reject his almost fundamentalist assertion that language must be fixed and unchanging, it seemed to me that he does raise a point of some interest: how long is to have elapsed before it is reasonable or necessary to review meanings of important texts in the light of current connotative understandings?
This has a much wider application than mere politics (he said, carefully avoiding mention of the bible) <<EG>>
But seriously, I meant the question in good faith as a debating point about how we use language over time.
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Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who's the fairest one of all?
Answer: A five-person majority on the Supreme Court, of course.
The answer to your question is, quite simply: when the courts tell us it's time for a change. Scalia may be a bit of a trog, but he's no fool, either. He thinks that a strict constructionist has the best chance of succeeding Renquist, which in the current state of our Union is probably true. And strict constructionists are, by their very nature, less amenable to the sort of reconstruction that the majority (or perhaps plurality would be a better term) on the court undertook with this landmark decision.
I'm not interested in getting into a political argument in this forum (I don't live ALL that far from Ms. Jackie, yunnerstand), but your question bears answering since it's an important one not only for our government but for the world as well, since, like it or not, our government holds great sway in the way the nations of the world work together or, sadly, fight with one another.
So please, people, let's keep the discussion narrowly focused here.
In its history, the Supreme Court has been very slow at overturning itself, and this recent trend certainly seems to signal that this conservative approach to stare decisis may be on the verge of a complete rethinking by the court.
An example of the other side of that same coin is the case of the two former CIA spies who were promised lifetiem income from the CIA in return for their spying for our country. The CIA reneged on its promise and the spies sued, only to have their case thrown out because spies don't have standing to sue in cases such as this, since to allow the case to go forward could conceivably damage national security. This is based on a case broght by one of Lincoln's personally recruited spies, whose pension was stopped after Lincoln's murder. The Supreme Court ruled that allowing the suit to go into court would breach a secrecy oath undertaken by the President, and that decision was used this week to throw out the case against the CIA.
Even though the potential plaintiffs argued (and I thought fairly convincingly) that it was possible to prosecute the case without revealing any secrets, the Court held that their decision from hmmm sometime in the 1870s or 80s, I expect, would be allowed to control.
It will be interesting to see what happens when, as it must, the court considers gay marriages, since the conservatives will be able to point to this decision and say that emerging community standards forbid gay marriages. Should be quite a tapdance for the court should it choose to allow gay marriages in a test between the 8th and 14th amendments.
TEd
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Fair enough, but first we should agree on the fundamentals of that of which we talk.
Language is...
1. a communication system of human culture that allows information to be interchanged that is pertinent to the survival of the breeding group.
2. Words have no absolute meanings and are in a constant state of transition.
3. Language is a function of evolution and cares only for cultural truths.
4. Some languages are better than others.
5. Words serve mainly as cultural adhesives to bring common purpose to the individuals of the breeding groups.
Agreed?
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4. Some languages are better than others.
Move to amend:
4. Some languages are better than others for certain purposes.
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Somewhere or other I used the word aggravate, intending it to be the equivalent of irritate (as in, I was aggravated by how long I had to wait). I was informed that aggravate means 'to make worse', which wouldn't apply to my usage, barring an assumption about my mood prior to having to wait!
Does anyone else use aggravate meaning irritate? I am wondering whether aggravate might have formerly had just the one meaning, but if the usage in my sense is common, has slowly acquired a second? And if so, is it valid?
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Bill asked me something about this, so I thought I might as well post here roughly what I said to him. What interested me here was nothing to do with the politics – read the words I actually posted, people, don’t make assumptions or WAGs about what you may believe I think. I don’t much like Scalia’s view of the world, but I respect his ability to use language.
I wanted to pursue the idea that language could be viewed as something like a stream – not of fixed meaning and immutable but fluid and always changing. I think we all freely recognise this about specific words – take the way the meaning of ‘nice’ has flip-flopped for example – but it then gets really interesting when you apply the same logic to a complete text. If we know the individual constituents of the sentences can change their connotations and also eventually their denotative meaning over time, it must follow that the meaning of complete sentences can and will change in the light of our experience over time.
Yet this must at some point conflict with our need for some degree of fixed ‘reality’, and perhaps this comes into sharpest relief in the arenas of law or moral expressions. After all, our day to day experience is based on the assumption that the law passed yesterday by congress is understood to mean ‘x’ today and will still mean ‘x’ tomorrow. This case brought home to me the fact that actually there is bound to be a growing tension over time, so the only real issue is where the boundary lies, as questioned by Scalia. So I thought it would be interesting to see what everyone else thought about the language issue.
I agree with your first two propositions, Mr Milum. I don’t agree with your third, unless by evolution you only mean change rather than the frequent connotation of ‘change for the better’, and I am unsure what you mean by a cultural truth. I agree with F’s revision for #4. I disagree with your #5 – it seems to me that the ways in which language are used are far more diverse than the role you are trying to assign to it. Some of these functions are about social coherence, and some are about social exclusion; some of them are about defining common purposes and some are about defining individual identity as separate from group identity completely.
TEd, I'm not at all clear where you're coming from - you ask us to keep the focus, then talk at some length abut matters that have absolutely no direct bearing on the thread's original topic.
Finally, may I respectfully suggest that separate queries about words could be more usefully taken to a new thread? Pursuing two or more simultaneous conversations is likely to make it even more chaotic than normal around here... ;)
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mav, i don't quite agree with Milo's #5 either, but..
i think he has an import point.
there are subset (special vocabularies) that are used to segrigate groups.
put any group together with a common interest, they will talk about there concerns--and use a special vocubulary.
be it rocket scientist, or rock stars!
jargon, argot, slang, call it what you will, we share language, and we hoard language.
we use it as tool to unite, and seperate.
From the smallest of groups, twins who make up their own 'languge' to commonwealths like the old UK that span the globe, language is a cultural force for both uniting and dividing.
i think point 5 is very important, and has been a topic in many threads(in many different ways.)
at times we focus on the unity language brings and times we focus on 'seperate' vocabularies used to differentciate groups, and sometimes we focus on how sometimes specific vocabularies evolve (out of geography, or other seperations) and wonder how this will effect the unity language provides. (ie, UK vs US english, (or UK vs. NZ english, or any flavor of english vs. any other)
We all know French and Italian and Spanish, started as latin, and now are seperate languages..
We all like our personal freedom to add to the lexis, but i think we would be sad to learn that in 1000 years, American was as different as English as Spanish is from French.
(Spanish in the new world is having that problem.. spanish speakers from all over the world mix here in NY--and they don't always understand each other.. (something a kin to taking an average texan, and dumping him into a farm community in say, Yorkshire.. --he might understand the words, but the local idioms and vocabulary would leave him in the dark about meaning! (and the same would happen to the Yorkshire farmer--he would be at loss in texas!)
in either case, they might only undertand a third to half of what was said!
hispanic's (i mean this word to indicate people who live in the english speaking world, but learn spanish as a first language) from cuba and puerto rico have different vocabularies..(as island populations often do) but they share a very similar environment.. cubans, or PR's, when talking to peruvians, or filopino's, or other hispanics from far flung geographical places often find the language they speak is different enough to much almost mutually uninteligible.
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Yeah Maverick, I've yet to understand how Doc Bill can read all the posts that we all make here on Awad but due to his fraility he can only respond through proxy? Strange man that Doc Bill.  I left the house 45 minutes ago with plans to respond to Faldage's comment when I got downtown, but 45 minutes is seven lifetimes here on Awad and since then the discussion here has unbraided a bit, but I will try to catch up. Faldage; I will second your abridgement of my generality and I will gladly enter your name for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court if you will promise not to prune my rose bushes. I fear your nit-pick pruning would leave only a nub. Maverick; Yes. yes, yes, I promise to stick to the opening proposition. Having a focal point for the diverse beliefs and ideas of our motley group is our only hope for salvation. Doc Bill; You don't want generalities? You want specifics? Ok here is a specific legal word that has changed through time... welfare (U.S. Constitution) the commonweal. welfare (current usage) government aid for needy people. I have more, Bill, and I will be back! OK. Now that these loose ends have been properly attended I will address the more pertinent points of the discussion with a much less rambling post in a very few short minutes. Thank you.
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To what extent does our use of language have a fixed and certain meaning?
Disagreement of terms: the meaning of the term "language". In particular " 4. Some languages are better than others."Ok I'll admit, Faldage and Maverick, I intentionally phrased that sentence to incite.  I get my kicks inciting my debatable betters, but mainly I wanted to give an example of semantic controls over meaning. A process that was once known far and wide as ->"logic"<-. Please follow the sequence... Some languages are better than other languages. (1)The fact that "languages" is plural dictates that languages are different from each other otherwise all languages would be the same. (2) These "differences" can be said to be better or worse depending on the criteria used in the determination. (3) If we agree that words have only an evolutionary function, then the "better" or "worse" value can be determined by a gauge of the degree of relative fulfillment of evolutionary function. Hey, words are easy, just follow the niches that language gives that allows us to make good sense. ______________________________________________________________________________________
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themilum: I haven't been following this thread up until now, but may I ask if you see Anu's discussion of his AWAD presentism - see below - as relevant to this discussion?
And, if Anu's discussion of "presentism" is relevant, is it possible that different high-minded thinkers could have an honest disagreement about something as fundamental as the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court because, although all of the Justices live in the same era, they are not necessarily breathing the same era?
I'm asking a question, not expressing an opinion, themilum, because I don't know enough about the case and the majority and dissenting opinions.
BTW you are a red state kinda guy, themilum, and you are multivastly outnumbered in this forum by blue state coastal types. In my opinion, this is good reason to give your views on subjects like this more latitude, rather than less, as a matter of principle, not politics.
How a majority treats a minority opinion on any given subject says more about the majority than its opinion on that subject.
presentism (PREZ-uhn-tiz-uhm) noun
Evaluating past events and people by present-day values.
[From English present, from Middle English, from Old French, from Latin praesent- (stem of praesens), from present participle of praeesse (to be present before others), from prae- (pre-) + esse (to be).]
Presentism is the application of current ideals and moral standards to interpret historical figures and their actions. For example, consider Mr. John Teacher who caned pupils in his 1889 class. A presentist would say that Mr. Teacher engaged in unacceptable violence against children while one with an opposing view would claim that since it was considered OK to hit children at the time, Mr. Teacher isn't to be blamed.
Absenteeism isn't an opposite of presentism. Rather, it refers to chronic absence, e.g. from work or school. Another sense of the term presentism is the idea that the prophesies of Scripture (especially of the Apocalypse) are now being fulfilled.
"In apocalyptic style, he (Jonathan Clark) says that presentism 'reaches back into the past to silence its message'." Stephen Howe; Fade to Blue; Independent (London, UK); Jul 12, 2003.
"Presentism is very often advanced in defense of America's founders. It is comforting to think that their generation, so distant in time from us, lived in a condition of moral ignorance, and thus innocence, regarding slavery. But that is not the case. Even Thomas Jefferson, some of whose
statements exhibit an almost demented racism, could see clearly that slavery utterly compromised the nation: 'I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.'" Henry Wiencek; Yale and the Price of Slavery; The New York Times; Aug 18, 2001.
per Anu
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Uh, Plutarch,I've...uh, kinda inherited this thread by default because the other crap shooters who once posted here have stopped posting and moved on to matters more worthy of their uh...personage, and so now, I am, so to speak, the semantic head.
Your choice, I'm afraid, is to play by my rules or else I will stop posting and your own echo will become your counterpoint.
But what good luck! My rules are simple. All I ask is for you to be polite and focus your sharp mind on the important subject of this thread. Yes, Anu's discussion of "presentism" is relevant but the horse of the matter is whether or not words, by their very nature, can lock in meaning between diverse cultures and prevent the adulteration of key words through time.
Admittedly this is a lofty subject and as such it requires that we first investigate the fundamental quirks and oddities of language.
Rail, snarl, and smirk, at what I say here but please offer other ideas rather than cute trite remarks in their place.
Together let us address the propositions at hand as I am here to learn; are not you?
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Sigh. Well it seems that the great white hope has bit the dust too so I'll guess I'll just continue on alone. Bitter pill. I wish to high hell that someone somewhere gave a swinging damn. Ok let's take an apple. An apple is good food so maybe the earliests of linguists had a name for it and that name might have been "yum". But of course one yum is not all yums because some yums are rotten and other yums are straight. The point here is that no apple is exactly the same as any other apple but for economy our language compromises the differences. (this is an important thought, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it.) Rotten apples, red apples, sour apples, wormy apples, little green apples, love apples, and so forth. We have more words for apple than the now defunct Eskimos had for snow. Are they words or phrases? Go ask a German...they are "thoughtunits". Now there is another class of words that have use only in the context of a social imperative. These are abstractions like "love" "honor" and "obey". Remember this and remember it well in case I am struck down from this board for heresy or trolling... NO WORDS HAVE ABSOLUTE MEANING, BUT ALL WORDS HAVE ABSOLUTE FUNCTION And no. The meaning of words is not "absolute function?
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the matter is whether or not words, by their very nature, can lock in meaning between diverse cultures and prevent the adulteration of key words through time
Hey, I didn't bite the dust, themilum. I just wasn't around much this past weekend.
I think we are agreed. Words mutate. So, there is no way to lock them up.
And many words are understood differently by different groups which share the same language even within the same culture. And, of course, the meaning of a word is even more elastic when it moves beyond national borders. Sweden and Denmark share many of the same words but, as I learned last night on the radio, some perfectly respectable words in Sweden are offensive in Denmark.
I assume you would argue from here, themilum, that every culture or micro-culture understands words differently and, therefore, they should interpret those words for themselves, without regard to the meaning attributed to those words in other cultures [for instance, in other states of the Union, or in other countries].
Would I have that right, themilum?
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In reply to:
I assume you would argue from here, themilum, that every culture or micro-culture understands words differently and, therefore, they should interpret those words for themselves, without regard to the meaning attributed to those words in other cultures [for instance, in other states of the Union, or in other countries].
Would I have that right, themilum?
No, theplutarch, your answer is part of the question.
The question being...
To what degree can words be definite in meaning across
cultural and individual interpretations? Already we have implicitly agreed that each interpretation of a information unit is unique;
whether interpreted by different cultures or
by different individuals or by the same individual
at all different times.
Have we not?
(I will now private mail Plutarch and beg him to come back and respond to this post because he is the only regular so far who has openly and honestly contributed to this theme without changing the subject to whims and things.)
Edit: Opps! Faldage forgive me. I should not have included you in the group of wanderers.
As most always your remark was terse and addressing a point.
I apologize.
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Dear themilum:
As a former member I do not think I can post here and remain consistent with my principles, but you seemed to have appealed to a higher principle, at least with respect to this particular exchange. :)
I don't think I can add much to this discussion which hasn't already been said, themilum, but it seems disrespectful to say nothing at all, especially in reply to you, considering your record for speaking out boldly in defence of your principles. [Some may think you were defending Plutarch, but I know better. :) And I hold you in higher esteem for that, themilum, than if you had been defending me and not your principles.]
re "To what degree can words be definite in meaning across cultural and individual interpretations?"
So, let me give it a try, at the risk of being tautologous. Or worse. :)
Lawmakers can try to nail down the precise meaning of words, of course. The problem is they can't foresee every contingency. That's why tax attorneys and accountants get paid so much to find loop-holes in taxation laws. And that's why taxation laws are so hopelessly dense and complicated to the ordinary, educated reader. [Nothing new in this observation, I agree.]
But no lawmaker has tried to nail down, in precise statutory terms, what a general term like "cruel and unusual punishment" means. Judges have taken a whack at it, and they continue to take a whack at it, but the words are wide open to subjective, individual interpretation.
And such interepretations vary from individual to individual, even amongst high-minded individuals, and, of course, they vary from culture to culture [say from the 'blue' culture to the 'red' culture] within the same country.
So that's why I said "the era of one's judgment" is a relevant consideration here, and why I suggested that Anu's AWAD on "presentism" could also be relevant.
I don't think that adds much to the discussion, themilum. But it adds something to the completeness of the high regard I have for you. I hope. :)
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