We recently lost the wonderful Diane Keaton, perhaps best known for her portrayal of Annie Hall in the film of the same name. There’s a funny scene in the movie that’s relevant to this post. In it, Annie and her boyfriend Alvy beautifully illustrated how flexible words can be.
The words are “three times a week.”
How could such a precise phrase mean more than one thing?
Annie and Alvy appear on a split screen. Each is with their own therapist in the midst of a session, with the two conversations brilliantly interlaced.
When the therapists ask their respective clients how often the couple is having sex, the answers are:
“Hardly ever,” according to Alvy. “Maybe three times a week.”
Annie’s reply? “Constantly. I’d say three times a week.”
Meanings are funny things. They can feel as though they’re self-evident, built into the words themselves. In this case, to Annie the phrase means “too much,” and to Alvy it means “too little.”
This feeling that meanings are implicit and shared accurately is socially reinforced when everyone behaves as if they have a shared understanding. But as the Annie Hall sequence shows, it’s we the people who assign meanings to words. The problem is that we can be blissfully unaware of disagreements, which may not become evident until our therapists prompt us to reveal them.
What Does “Group” Really Mean?
What do you think would happen if you asked five people to write down the definition of a common word? “Group,” for example.
No need to try it. I’ve done it many times, much to the annoyance of friends and students I coerce into being subjects in my strange little experiment. The results are as you’d probably expect: Rarely do any definitions match. Some differ by a word or two, others are wildly dissimilar.
For most purposes, it doesn’t matter that different people attach slightly different meanings to the same words. In normal discourses, such as conversations or reading, approximate meanings are usually evident from the context. We can tell from the context that “group” is being used to refer to a set of individuals at the same workplace or to a set of countries linked by a trade agreement. Despite the massive differences in nature and scale, it’s still reasonable to call them both groups.
In some situations, however, even the smallest variations in meanings can lead to misunderstandings and adverse consequences. In 1999, NASA’s Mission Control uploaded numerical instructions to the navigation system of a Mars-bound satellite. The message itself was as precise as could be. The problem was that the software interpreted the numbers in metric units (meters, kilograms, etc.), while mission control sent them in standard imperial units (feet, pounds, etc.). Instead of going into orbit around Mars, the satellite burned up in the atmosphere.
Misunderstood meanings can have social consequences as well. They can make the difference between continued hostilities versus a ceasefire in wartime negotiations, or the resolution of an otherwise intractable spousal conflict, or the success or failure of a test of a scientific theory.
Meanings in Science
Especially in science, developing and sharing precisely defined terms is essential to furthering knowledge. Terms combine to form statements. Statements combine to form logical arguments. Arguments combine to form scientific theories. A single ambiguous term can render entire theories ambiguous, so scientists take extra care to define terms clearly.
Suppose I have a theory of how power differences emerge in small groups. Even before I test the theory in the field or the lab, I’d need to define “power” and “group” as clearly as I can to prevent others from interpreting these terms in ways I never intended. If someone tries to replicate my study, I’d want to rule out misapplications, such as treating a herd of cats as a group, or a weightlifter’s capacity as power.
Clear definitions help ensure that the meanings in the communicator’s mind match the meanings held by readers. Such alignment is especially important when the readers are scientists interested in applying or testing the theory containing those terms. At its core, science is a collective enterprise. We carefully check each other’s theories and tests. But for members of a scientific discipline to work together to solve problems, they must first understand one another. And that’s a good lesson to learn, even outside the realm of science.
Defining terms explicitly is hard work, and unfortunately, there are large swaths of social science (my domain) where doing so isn’t normative. While it’s vitally important to be clear, for many, it’s a daunting and unfamiliar task. It’s also unappreciated. Writers in my field can generally presume their readers know what they mean, and their readers usually let them get away with being vague. Maybe it’s because even poor definitions feel like they’re clarifying meanings. But they’ll crumble as soon as you probe their limits, much to the detriment of progress in our fields.
Suppose you define “group” as “a set of people who regularly interact.” Seems reasonable, at least for some purposes. But this definition would unduly constrain any theory in which the term appears. Most groups larger than ten or so have pairs of members who don’t necessarily interact much, but can still reasonably be called members. You don’t want to rule them out.
On the other hand, defining “group” as "any set of connected people" doesn’t constrain the meaning nearly enough to be useful. All people are connected via DNA, for example, so at the very least, we’d need a more precise definition for “connected” before such a definition could be useful.
Kinds of Definitions
In everyday life, meanings emerge and evolve organically through cultural and linguistic dynamics. In science, we assign meanings intentionally and explicitly, depending on what we want to include and exclude under our terms.
Consider these two important kinds of definitions:
Denotative definitions assert the meaning of a term via examples.
In this theory, a group is a set of people, such as a family, a legislative body, a jury, or a corporate board.
To some extent, the examples hint at what the author/theorist has in mind. As in everyday discourse, most terms that get defined at all in the social sciences are defined this way.
Denotive definitions evoke a feeling of comprehension in the reader because they offer concrete examples of abstract concepts. Sure, a baseball team is kind of like a family. Or maybe an advisory board seems close enough to a corporate board to qualify as a group. Oddly, it’s mostly left up to the reader as to whether a particular entity does or does not qualify as a group for purposes of theorizing and testing. So that feeling of comprehension is illusory.
In practice, denotative definitions are less than ideal. They don’t tell us for certain whether or not something satisfies the definition unless it appears in the list of examples. Is a set of people waiting at a bus stop similar enough to a jury to be considered a group? Who’s to say? It behooves the author to be clearer to avoid any misunderstanding. The key to being clearer is to use the next type of definition.
Connotative definitions establish a set of properties that a thing must possess for it to count as an instance of its label. For example,
In this theory, a group is a bounded set of people who share a single self-identity and are connected either directly or indirectly through ties to one another.
There are always different ways one could define “group” connotatively. But what’s crucial is that authors clarify their intended meanings to the greatest extent possible. Then, just as importantly, it also becomes clear what isn’t a group for the author’s purposes. Not only does this help to clarify the theory’s meaning in the minds of readers, but it also provides safeguards against inappropriate applications and tests of the theory.
Why It’s Important
Politicians often manipulate sentiments and opinions by toying with the meanings of words. Their intention—indeed, their very job—is often not to foster clarity, but to promote themselves and their own agendas, and to denigrate their opponents and their opponents’ agendas. When you listen to political speeches and key in on the slipperiness of their words, it helps you to think critically about what they’re saying, what they mean, what they want, and what they want you to do.
I’m writing this a few days after seven million Americans marched peacefully in “No Kings” rallies against rising authoritarianism in the U.S. government. You would think that rally goers and non-goers alike might agree on the patriotic, pro-American, pro-Constitution meaning of “no kings.” And yet, over and over again, I saw conservative politicians, media, and pundits refer to these gatherings as “We Hate America Rallies.” Branding the seven million as anti-American tries to define them oppositely. That may be of some comfort to the minority of Americans who actually want to live under authoritarian rule. But to be so comforted is to ignore what it means to be patriotic: love of country and support for the Constitution, both of which were on full display at the rallies.
A little more attention to the meanings of words would go a long way toward resolving conflicts. This is true whether we’re talking about close personal relationships or about choosing sides in political conflicts. It’s always possible that a given disagreement is based on different values, desires, personalities, and so on. But you may be surprised how often they’re based only on each misunderstanding the other’s intended meanings. It’s usually the case that we agree on far more than we don’t.
My earliest interest in cutting-edge science was mainly in evolutionary biology. As a high schooler, I watched National Geographic TV specials about archaeologist Louis Leakey, who unearthed the remai
I love ice cream. But for the sake of our collective health, maybe I should give it up. It’s not just because the main ingredients of our beloved frozen indulgence are known to contribute to obesity,
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