VOCABULARY

EUGENE HALLIDAY Podcast

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Most of our vocabulary is acquired as children and remains ‘passive’.The terms we use are mostly not defined and their implications are not examined. Our words are learned in social situations and with emotive overtones; e.g. the word ‘naughty’. So when we hear a particular word we receive with it some reference to other things and to emotional tones which condition our reaction to it.

The superiority of the human being over other animals depended upon its capacity for mimicry. Human hunters learned to copy the sounds made by animals in order to dupe them. Other animals can mimic and deceive each other to some extent, through protective colouring, for example, but not so efficiently as humans. It was through this mimicry of the animal world that humans discovered they could influence a situation with words, with sounds, very economically. By words, a bigger man could dominate a group by demonstrating his superior physical strength and communicate this efficiently. We all, through imagination, can understand that a powerful man can dominate because we all have ancestors who have been subjected to physical attack by stronger men. The modifications of ancestral protoplasm are passed down to us so that we do not have to be reminded of this. i.e. the emotive association attached to a word is enough to constrain our behaviour.

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