Friday, April 4, 2008

Abuses of Language

Locke focuses on the problems with language in book 3. He says that words refer to ideas and that we shouldn't use a word if there is not a clear idea of what that word refers to. He says that the only way we can guarantee that language does not lead us astray is to define our terms and stick to strict policies of usage. I agree with Locke on this point about our language. There are so many different views of words with each area of the country and in different parts of the world.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i agree that words are complicated, and what makes it worse is when we make up words at a given moment to get our point across. i dont think there are any words that have distinct meanings, words are defined by other words.

Matthew Lorah said...

This is a good point that Locke brings up here that we need to define a word in a language one to preserve the word and two to be able to know what the real meaning of the word is. This is happing know how many words have the same meainging. Like that my dog as in a pet and that my dog as in my friend.