The Word Part 3

All this thinking about words got me thinking about words. My original word was structure. The thing I found most interesting about the word after spending some time with it was it’s variability. While not the most diverse word in English, it shows a little bit about how many meanings a word can have. Structure is a little boring. All of it’s meanings have to do with how things are put together. But it got me thinking about shades of meaning. And that led me to the word set. Set supposedly has more definitions than any other English word. About.com said that the Oxford English Dictionary has 464 definitions for the word set. And 396 for run. So this got me thinking about the variability of meaning in English words. These words with many meanings are called homonyms.

When I emailed Beth for my final step, I got told to relate this idea to the word “deer.” As in the animal. It turns out, this word had only one meaning. How deflating. I couldn’t have been more disappointed, because the word deer provided no insight into my fascination with variation. It was a literal, concrete word that could only mean one thing. Unless you didn’t see it but only heard it. Dear. As in Dear John. So now we’re into homophones. Words that sound the same, but have different meanings and spellings. Confusing. I’m glad I learned English before I had time to think about it. This is a crazy language.

So what does this all mean? Why is this important that words can mean different things, and words can seem to be the same and mean different things. It means language is interesting. It means you can use homonyms and homophones and all sorts of different linguistic tricks and oddities to make something interesting with language. I know this class is about New Media, but I think it all comes down to good writing. Whether you want to be a web designer, movie maker, or create graphic novels, all of these things are just manifestations of written language. So if you can’t control the English language in an effective and interesting way, you can’t create things in other media that connect with people. Not very easily anyway. I guess that what I’m saying is that most media products have their origin in the written language. And that’s how structure and deer work together.

I tried to come up with a way to put all of this into a New Media-ish project with after effects and such, but I think that since all of this stuff led me to think about language, it was best served in essay form. Now if that isn't seeing sideways, I don't know what is. Or is it a cop out, falling back on the medium in which I'm most comfortable, writing? I guess we'll never know for sure, as it would have been a subconcious impulse for me. I would certainly never take the easy way out on purpose.