Is G. W. Bush a conservative? Is chess a sport? Is Jesus a philosopher? The answers to these questions depend on the meanings of 'conservative,' 'sport,' and 'philosopher.' There is no use disputing these questions until the relevant terms have been defined in at least a preliminary fashion.
Now one mistake often made is to think that there must be some true definition of a word or phrase. But whether a definition is true or false depends on the sort of definition at issue. In this post I explain the difference between purely stipulative and purely lexical definitions and point out that only the latter can be said to be either true or false. In a later post I will discuss political definitions and argue that they involve both stipulative and lexical elements.
1. Purely stipulative definitions. Suppose I make up a word and give it a meaning. I stipulate that a fred is anything that is both fat and red. I have concoted a common noun and attached a meaning to it for some purpose I have in mind. Surely it would be absurd for someone to object: "You've got it wrong; a fred is anything that is both fat and dead!" An arbitrary stipulation is just that: arbitrary. There is no fact of the matter to argue about. Thus it makes no sense to ask whether a purely stipulative definition is either true or false. To the extent that a definition rests on stipulation, to that extent no question of truth or falsity can arise.
2. Other definitions are purely lexical. The purpose of such 'dictionary' definitions is to set forth the meaning of a word or phrase in use within a given linguistic community at a given time. The meaning of 'weblog,' for example, in its main current use is obviously not a matter of stipulation. An adequate definition must be crafted in such a way as to capture the way the term is actually used by the cognoscenti. Thus we might say that
A weblog is a frequently updated website consisting of relatively brief permalinked posts arranged in reverse chronological order with hyperlinks to material cited.
I submit that this is good definition. Merriam-Webster's, however, offers a multiply defective definition: "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks."
The first problem with this definition is the word 'personal.' A blog can be personal, but it can also be as impersonal as you like. There are blogs in which nothing of a personal nature is allowed to intrude: they treat some subject-matter in an objective way much as a professional publication would.
The phrase, "often hyperlinks," is not quite right either. Without hyperlinks, it would be a stretch to call an online journal a blog. A good blogger links, when possible, to material he or she is quoting or responding to. This is part of what makes this medium so useful and so powerful. Hyperlinkage is the soul of the Web's webbiness.
Third, a weblog without permalinked individual posts is arguably not a weblog. A blog with links but without permalinks is 'webby' but not 'blogospheric.' The blogosphere is a proper subspace of the Web, and what distinguishes the blogosphere are permalinked posts.
"With reflections, comments. . ." points to a fourth problem with the M-W definition. It is redundant to say that an online journal will contain reflections and comments. What would a blogger be doing if he weren't commenting on this and that, whether it be on the events of the day, or on other blogger's reactions to the events of the day, or on interesting links he has dug up, or . . . ? But if the suggestion is that a weblog must allow comments by readers, then that is wrong: a weblog is no less a weblog if it disallows comments from readers.
The main point, however, is that there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not a lexical definition is adequate. There is something one can sensibly argue about. So there is a sense in which purely lexical definitions are either true or false. What makes the true ones true are facts about usage in a given community at a given time.
Thus what makes my definition of 'weblog' true is not its faithful rendition of the invariant essence weblog but its capturing of a certain pattern of usage, a pattern subject to change.
Meaning is tied to use, and when use changes, meaning changes. So there are no 'true meanings' of words. Nevertheless, a word can be misused if one of its users uses it in a manner at variance with the common usage accepted among the cognoscenti.
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