Friday, May 04, 2012

The Limits of Language



So much of life is not quite this and not quite that. We grapple with conditions that fall in-between the usual categories and yet often find that no word exactly describes reality. Frustrated, we slap a word on a matter that doesn't fit the word's definition and then have to deal with the result of our inaccuracy. [It is as if we asked for the precise location of something and got the reply: "Yonder."]

I recall a management team being described as neither good nor bad overall but somewhere in-between on various matters. Hmm. Okay.

Some of our worst reasoning may be sparked by an accumulation of such gaps.

2 comments:

Kurt Harden said...

Some of our worst reasoning is based on those gaps AND often times those gaps are created by an unwillingness to call something what it is. A management team is something; if it isn't good then "not bad" is an unnecessary add-on. We got the point at "not good".

Michael Wade said...

Kurt,

That's an important point. There are many workplaces where direct language hasn't been used in years.

Michael