Wednesday, March 24, 2010

What's in a word?

Last semester in hermeneutics class, I learned about how context - shared knowledge - is so important for effective communication in language. A sentence may mean one thing in one context, and another thing in a different context. Or perhaps a sentence may appear meaningless when divorced from the context.

I thought back to that hermeneutics lesson when I came across this sentence today:

The uplift is in perfect harmony with the meander.

The context was my geology study guide.

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