[quote]So I was in an argument about a week ago about how I can't say that this tree is a tree, because someone else could call it a giraffe, and if I were to say, no, it's a tree, they could say no I think it's a giraffe because I've grown up with perceiving that as a giraffe, and been taught that the word to describe this thing is giraffe. Now while this is obviously stupid, I realized you can't even argue against it.[/quote]
Yes you can.
The definition of what something is, is decided by popular opinion. A tree is a tree because trillions of people, past and present, have looked at it and said "That's a tree" and told their children and friends "That's a tree." The definition of what something is then falls against these norms cemented over hundreds of thousands of years.
A person can call a tree a giraffe but they would be wrong because their definition does not match the norm.
English
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Wrong. A definition is subject to change from person to person. This isn't a matter of perception or popularity, this is a matter of symbols; symbols that mean different things to different people. Just because someone doesn't fall in line with the social norm doesn't mean they are wrong. Words are symbols we assign meaning to specific images or messages. What we set them to is our own idea. You see a giraffe; I see a tree; Yet we are looking at the same object, merely with different assigned meanings.
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Edited by The Great DanTej: 5/9/2013 4:55:07 AMThe way language works is that we all learn to assign words to nouns/abstract concepts/etc............and it only works because we all use the same words for the same nouns (although abstract concepts are a bit more..........abstract), giraffe is one of those nouns, and so is tree, so you are by definition wrong if you call one the other(both in societies' and the dictionary's definition).
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Edited by LordMonkey: 5/9/2013 5:27:09 AMYou are confining the definition to a word by a single society. Objects that we assign these meanings to are individualistic in the sense we assign these words ourselves. What they mean to you may not mean the same thing to others. It is true that language is a agree-upon and shared set of symbols that people communicate through, but this isn't an argument about language, it is about symbols and the meanings we assign to them. Just because a group of people all agree that the object is a giraffe doesn't change the fact someone else or another group of people see the exact same object as a tree.
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I'm confining the words of a society to the society that uses them, there is no room for personal opinion when it comes to words like tree and giraffe. Now you can have an opinion on what these words represent, but that doesn't change what they represent(because once again, the words are defined by society, not you). And no, this is an argument about words and their meaning AKA language, now if someone showed us a rorschach test, then it would be an argument about symbols and what we personally see. And lastly, they can call it a tree as much as they like, but unless in their language 'tree' is a homonym 'giraffe', then what they are seeing is a giraffe (a rose by any other name is still a god damn rose)
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[quote]there is no room for personal opinion when it comes to words like tree and giraffe.[/quote]Then you obviously don't understand the basis of language.
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mr pot, please stop calling me black love - mr kettle
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Exactly this.