“All language is vague.” As a student trying to learn the Spanish language, I can somewhat empathize with these words by Bertrand Russell. I remember during my first days here in Spain when my initial problem consists of learning the translation of words. In one instance, I was asked how I am coping with the language barrier. I tried to mentally translate the phrase “I am embarrassed” in Spanish. As I remembered that some Spanish words share some similarity with English words, I haltingly said, “Yo estoy . . . embarazado.” The other person gave me a puzzled look which I only understood later on when I consulted the dictionary and found out that embarazado means pregnant. How embarrassing indeed!
Yet, what is the meaning of vagueness? Russell would say that vagueness (and precision) has “to do with the relation between a representation and that which it represents”. In this way, vagueness is a problem of meaning in so far as Russell sees meaning as the relation between a word and the thing it means. This view is significantly different from the modern diagnosis of vagueness as, first and foremost, a problem of truth-value gluts or gaps. Russell would further contrast vagueness with accuracy which he defined as “a one-one relation” of a representing system to the represented system. A representation is vague because the relation is not one-one but one-many. For Russell, “In an accurate language, meaning would be a one-one relation.” Yet, as he himself acknowledges, this cannot be in the actual world where words, more often than not, have many meanings.
This many meanings of words are not only relegated to the words themselves but to the context of their use. Consider my experience when one person exclaimed to me, “¡Que barbaro!” when I narrated a personal story. I was shocked and felt insulted because I was quite certain that barbaro means barbaric or uncivilized. But my indignity was placated when I learned later on that the phrase in that context means, “that’s great” or “that’s cool.” Even the context of culture influences the meaning of some words as the Spanish verb coger (to get) has a quite different and unpleasant connotation to a Mexican.
Now, is vagueness a problem? For Russell, who wishes to solve the problems of philosophy by clarifying meanings, it is a problem. And on a wider scale, international conflicts as well as domestic ones brought about by misunderstanding could be minimized or even eradicated if we perfectly understand each other. The words we say exactly convey a uniformed meaning without any hidden connotations or implications. Surely, with such accurate and precise language, philosophy, not to mention worldly and personal affairs, would surely progress.
Yet something is amiss. Language is what distinguishes us rational beings from animals. It reflects our ingenuity and our capacity to soar with our thoughts and imagination. Language is not something learned from the textbook, our whole being is immersed in it. It is multi-layered in its meaning which bares open its doors for us to discover it. Consider a joke. The beauty of a joke is its double or even multi-meaning. We laugh and appreciate it when we are able to decipher its meaning. We “get” the joke and we somehow pity someone who does not “get” or understand it. We have the ability to digest what is meant in its actual context and transcend its literal form.
Every language is beautiful. It is rich and its richness lies in its multiplicity of meaning and context. Learning a language is an adventure we set out to thread from our infancy. It is not plain or easy. We sometimes stumble in grasping it. We learn the twists and turns of its complexity as we travel along its path. It is an on-going process that will only end in death. Removing vagueness in language, while it clarifies meaning, entails sacrificing the beauty of language. It will make it tepid, one-dimensional and boring. It will suppress language’s growth and hence stagnate our own creativity. Vagueness is very much a part of the beauty of language. While at times it can prove to be an irksome inconvenience, its outright removal or exorcism from our language by having a systematic one-one relationship of signifying terms and the thing signified will be quite a disaster. The only solution, I believe, is to immerse ourselves in untangling the enigma of language, to “get” what is truly meant – to treat language as an adventure of discovery.
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