Meanings of words often drift

I'm taken back, sometimes upset, when people insult words by ascribing meanings other than what was long meant.

Sometimes flawed meanings are benign. It happens when we innocently confuse words and meanings. We all use a wrong word occasionally; we substitute a similar sounding or spelled word for another. A friend of mine, for example, invariably says “tenure” when he means “tenor” as in “the tenor of the dialogue was hostile.”

Of only slightly more concern is definitional drift. Here word meanings change minutely over time as subtlies and nuances arise around us. Finally we have words with clearly changed meanings or new connotations. The slow rate of these changes, however, typically allows full, accurate transition to the new.

New and expanded meanings have sped up in recent decades. These, too, are evolutionary changes. Advances in technology have contributed enormously to these changes - both by adopting words from other contexts to describe aspects of the technology itself (bits and bites, for example, come easily to mind) and by technology's global impact that has effectively shrunk the world.

It's clear that advanced technology has eased communications among distant peoples. We consequently get virtually unimpeded interchange of words and ideas across former language borders. This happens as English, for instance, is used by people around the planet. Changes for us evolve as our words in other languages have comparable but not identical meanings. Consequently over time certain “foreign” influences may blend with and modify our original meanings.

On another tack, slang has long been recognized as a meaning-changing culprit.

But we also find malicious misuse of words. One shameful exploitation is hyper-promotion by advertisers; “natural” and “green” are two current favorites. Most ominously, however, is the blatant abuse of words in the political arena. These are uses that go beyond political spin-though spinning surely stretches many traditional meanings within our language.

I recently recognized that some among us have chosen to subvert a perfectly respectable concept. This vocabulary insult was used to chastise President Obama for his use of the word by making it seem vulgar or even anti-American. This ploy was initiated by anti-Obama talking-heads and political opponents. The distortion became a headline-making hullabaloo prior to confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor as the newest Supreme Court justice.

Preceding Sotomayor's nomination, President Obama noted that he would look for a nominee with “empathy.” Opposition spin artists salivated over the word choice; they knew most of us don't know its real meaning. Perversely they sought to convince us that there is something morally wrong, even un-American, about an empathetic person. Absolutely wrong!  Indeed, the concept is basic to maintaining democratic governance.

To put my argument simply: Democracy cannot succeed if we don't have at least a cadre of empathetic activist leaders. Indeed the more empathetic we all are, the better for our societal and political success. Sadly, however, empathy remains a quality in short supply.

Empathy's meaning is simple and straight forward. Empathy is being able to describe events from the perspectives of people who hold different views. It does not mean that empathetic people are in anyway sympathetic to those other people, though they might be. (Failure to understand differences between empathy and sympathy is the crux of the ruckus over the president's word. Shame on us for allowing political hacks to impose a false definition on this critical concept.)  

Let me state it again. Empathy does not mean empathetic persons embrace the thoughts, aspirations or ideas of others. One can, in fact, believe the exact opposite of any person with whom one is empathizing. Empathy means that one can accurately portray the world-rightly or wrongly-as though in the other person's shoes.

Empathy is critical for democracy. Our governance system, we suggest, implies that whenever possible, we should strive for win-win problem solutions. Such everyone-a-winner outcomes typically emerge, however, only as conferees understand a problem from the perspectives of all participants. Only then can we achieve common ground as a means to further everyone's hopes and aspirations.

Empathy threatens doctrinaire ideologues. That's because empathy undercuts mindless adherence to prescribed ideologies that reject how others see or experience the world.

Gary Knox is Yuma-area school superintendent and a guest columnist for the Yuma Sun.