Tok-Analyzing Language as a Way of Knowing

There is no way to overrate the importance of language. For some, it is a career. For others, it is the difference between life and death. Language, as a form of knowledge, pervades every other realm of knowledge—simply because it is the most commonly used way to communicate logic, ideas, and perceptions. Language simply is one of the most important tools, as well as one of the most powerful ones, that human beings use everyday. Language runs into problems when the multiple meanings of words, the multitude of words representing one meaning and the ambiguity of some definitions, leads to problems with misunderstanding and deception.

Firstly, there is the matter of the multiple meanings that some words seem to possess. It may seem unreasonable to many that different ideas or objects can posses the same symbol used to describe it, but this can be attributed to mainly one reason. In the English language alone, over 4,000 words fit into this category. It is therefore necessary for more than one meaning to share a single word. Due to this, however, it is sometimes difficult to interpret a sentence in the proper fashion if a word that has multiple meanings is used. An example of this could be "I dislike like the school because of the location". This could be interpreted several different ways due to the different meanings that "dislike" possesses. It could either mean, for example, the person dislikes the school’s location, or simply dislikes the school. The question also arises: What do you mean by “dislike”? Does the person mean that they are dissimilar to the school’s atmosphere or that they detest the school? In order to combat this fallacy, one must be careful to select specific words that describe something specifically, and not one with different meanings whenever possible.

Furthermore, some words have extremely close or intersecting definitions, meaning one word may be involved for the definition of another. As an example, here are some of the many words