Language
Ordinary language, which uses symbolic conventions and associations which are often not logical, inherently contains many fuzzy concepts - "knowing what you mean" in this case depends on knowing the context or being familiar with the way in which a term is normally used, or what it is associated with. This can be easily verified for instance by consulting a dictionary, a thesaurus or an encyclopedia which show the multiple meanings of words, or by observing the behaviours involved in ordinary relationships which rely on mutually understood meanings.
To communicate, receive or convey a message, an individual somehow has to bridge his own intended meaning and the meanings which are understood by others, i.e. the message has to be conveyed in a way that it will be socially understood, preferably in the intended manner. Thus, people might state: "you have to say it in a way that I understand".
This may be done instinctively, habitually or unconsciously, but it usually involves a choice of terms, assumptions or symbols whose meanings may often not be completely fixed, but which depend among other things on how the receiver of the message responds to it, or the context. In this sense, meaning is often "negotiated" or "interactive" (or, more cynically, manipulated). This gives rise to many fuzzy concepts.
But even using ordinary set theory and binary logic to reason something out, logicians have discovered that it is possible to generate statements which are logically speaking not completely true or imply a paradox, even although in other respects they conform to logical rules.
Read more about this topic: Fuzzy Concept
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
“The language of the younger generation ... has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.”
—Elizabeth Hardwick (b. 1916)
“The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)