A Few Words on Words

A friend and colleague of mine -- we're both lawyers and think it's fair to say both often involved in statutory interpretation at fairly high levels -- recently explained his view on a statute as "I just think words have meaning." As cryptic as that statement was in context -- it begs the question what meaning -- it's a common sense view shared by almost everyone. But it's wrong.

Words do not have meaning. Let us pause to note that for everyday discourse it doesn't matter. But at high levels, at technical levels, and to correctly understand the world, it matters. So let's discuss this.

Words are not containers filled with meaning. They're not boxes one puts meaning in. They're not like a glass of orange juice where the word is the glass and the orange juice is the meaning filing it up. If you have a word -- spoken or written -- it does not have the meaning within itself.¹ Since we can use a word -- "fair" for instance -- for multiple unrelated meanings, its meaning is not intrinsic in its sounds or symbols.

Of course, a word is usually also not its own meaning. That's different from a word having meaning; under this theory the word is the meaning.

Instead of having meaning or being meaning, words do something else: they suggest meaning(s). They require an interpretative system; the word in the interpretive system yields the meaning. Neither has the meaning or is the meaning alone. Rather than being containers for meaning, words are keys to meaning. And that is not a metaphor: words literally are keys to meaning.

A word, strictly speaking, is a sound or collection of sounds if spoken, and a symbol or collection of symbols if written.² It may indicate more than one meaning ("fair" being but one of thousands of examples in English).³ The meaning is found by the context in which the sounds or symbols are used. Thus -- for an obvious example -- sounds or symbols may call forth completely different associations when used in a different language. This distinguishes our glass of orange juice, for example. The Englishman and the Frenchman drink the same glass of orange juice and consume the same thing; whether it is orange juice or apple juice, say, does not depend on its context.  Yet, the symbols or collection of sounds to them -- a word -- may be very different as received by each.

Unfortunately, the word "word" is itself ambiguous as commonly used. The belief that words have meaning or are meanings leads us not only to repeatedly refer to the meaning a word "has" or what the meaning of a word "is," but leads us to assert that even the same word is becomes a different word when used in a different way. Thus, "fair" is not one word but multiple words. It is. some supposes, a different word to mean equal treatment and from the same collection of sounds and symbols referring to a gathering. This casual way of referring to words is serviceable if we don't let happenstance of use confuse us. If we do, we are led down a rabbit hole of confusion about how the meaning of words might change, the definiteness of meaning, objective versus objective meaning, and so forth. Words do not have meaning; they are a tool to exchange meaning, allowing us to unlock (not always successfully) the meaning of the speaker.
__________________________
¹ The speaker/writer -- the utterer -- of the word might particularly think the word contains meaning as the utterance of sound or symbols is all the utterer seems to provide. Of course, they provide more, intentional or no: they provide context. The recipient relies on that context as well as the sounds or symbols in the attempt to determine meaning. One can speak of the meaning intended by the utterer and the meaning understood by the recipient. It is, strictly speaking, incorrect to speak of meaning as simply existing in the abstract.
² Per Dictionary.com a "word"  is "a unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning." the notion that a word "carries" meaning is sloppy thinking for in observable fact (however the term "word" is used) it does not "carry" meaning.  It suggests meaning in various degrees of specificity and that meaning cannot be gleaned until it is interpreted. For my purposes I shall use "word" to simply mean a sound or collection of sounds if spoken, and a symbol or collection of symbols if written, intended to suggest meaning when interpreted. (We might further elaborate it to recognize gesture for speakers of ASL (and, indeed, anyone who speaks with gestures), computer and electronic code and machine language, flags, lights, Morse code, and so forth, all of which are forms of interpreted code.)
³ If one is not a cultural bigot one must note, as well, that some languages do not use "words" per se as many speaking European languages use the term. their sounds and symbols constitute ideograpms and logomorphs; in the sense I use "word" I encompass these as well.