Defining Words

I read an interesting article this week - I think it came from the Chicago Tribune originally. The article was called "Redefining Definition," and it was about the future of dictionaries in the age of the internet.

Do you remember your vocabulary lists from high school (or earlier)? Take a word, look it up in the dictionary, and use it in a sentence? How often did you find that the definition didn't really tell you what you needed to know to create your sentence right?

I consider myself pretty good with words. Better now, of course, but I was always decent with them, and I still had trouble with this. I remember using "aggravate" in the sense of, "My brother really aggravates me sometimes," and getting dinged for it. But the fact was, I couldn't grasp "aggravate" based on the dictionary definition alone.

Writing definitions is apparently quite an art form. The writers collect as many examples as they can of the word being used in context, and then based on this try to come up with something succinct that captures the word's meaning. It's amazing that they can do it, and the reason they have to is that paper dictionaries are limited in their length.

As this article mentioned, the internet changes the game by removing the need for succinctness. In fact, it suggests that an internet resource would allow people to behave in the same way as the definition-writers: to see a list of examples of the word so they could formulate a definition - or at least, have a better understanding of the definition as it has been phrased.

I generally agree with this, though some might argue that kids will scavenge the examples for their own assignments. This is, after all, the way we form the meanings of words in our own minds - by concatenating the contexts in which we've seen them.

I actually attempt to pull this trick sometimes in stories, and you might too. Have you ever created a word to represent a complex concept, not really defined it explicitly but let people watch it play out to figure out what it means? That's what I'm talking about. I'm also talking about getting readers to re-interpret words that they already know. If you've ever used an alternate point of view, alien or antagonist, to interpret things that should be normal as strange and vice versa, you may be doing it there, too.

It's something to think about.

A different value: alcohol

I've heard it said that every society in the world has some sort of intoxicant. Alcohol is a big one worldwide. What brought it to mind for me today was a link that a friend passed on to me, about a group of researchers in England who are trying to find a healthier substitute for alcohol. They're working to find a substance that would cause pleasant inebriation, but wouldn't poison people or cause hangovers, wouldn't cause emotional swings or addiction, and which could be counteracted rapidly by an antidote that could be given at any time. The article is here.

I imagine the consequences of substituting that stuff into alcoholic drinks. Now, that's science fiction. There's an entire culture, or two, or three, or more, surrounding alcohol consumption. Substitution would require an enormous revision. Lots of money and lives saved, first of all. Lots. But I could also see plenty of push-back. Where is the hard edge that you're perceived to have, as an alcohol drinker? If you need that perception of risk and danger, where will you buy it?

I suspect there would be instant upheaval followed by a longer-term shift in cultural perception. Who knows whether a shift like that could be successful on the long term, or where it would land the largest segments of the population.

But it's worth considering the value that we place on alcohol and other intoxicants. I'll remind new readers that when I say value, I don't mean "values" in an ideological sense, and I don't mean good or bad. Alcohol plays a role in our culture, different from the role it plays in other world cultures in some subtle ways. I remember being surprised when I visited France by the difference in the way alcohol consumption was treated. I remember thinking at a certain time in my life that people wouldn't go as crazy on their 21st birthday if alcohol weren't treated as such an awful taboo, and thereby given such incredible cachet. Who knows - maybe they would, but I suspect it wouldn't be nearly such a big deal.

Let me remark that there are excellent physiological reasons for age restrictions on alcohol. Alcoholism is a serious problem, surrounded by its own patterns of behavior. But it's interesting to me to watch movies and take a look at how the consumption of alcohol is portrayed in different ways. I believe there has been a shift in our perceptions of alcohol consumption, because for years and years - from Shakespeare's Stefano up to Uncle Waldo in the Aristocats - the drunkard was portrayed as an amusing clown. I don't see that image any more. The scientific recognition of alcoholism as a disease has changed that. There are still plenty of movies where you have party behaviors and binge drinking, etc. but even there it's no longer seen as solely amusing. The sense of risk is there, I think, even if the pathos and the real danger are not.

If you were creating a society, would you include alcoholic drinks or other intoxicants? It seems likely. I wonder if it might be fruitful to consider changing their value. Ask, for example, for whom the alcohol might be most attractive, and to whom it might be most readily available (possibly not the same group). Does the society have alcoholism? How does that express itself at different levels of socioeconomic status? Does it have locations dedicated to the consumption of alcohol? How are they accepted or perceived by others? Does alcohol consumption have a classy side and an ugly side, as it does for us? What form might that take?

There's lots of potential there for interesting stories.

Metabolism and Daily Time Organization

Did you ever think about the workday? 9-5, they typically say, even though there's generally an additional half-hour to an hour included for lunch, which changes things around a bit.

Now think about the things that can cause variation in this schedule. There are places where work has to continue 24 hours per day, so that people come in in shifts. There are places which have a lot of connections in a different time zone, so they shift their daily schedule earlier or later to have better rapport with the other location(s). There are places where the lunch hour is extra long to accommodate the main meal at noon, or the main meal plus a nap (potentially).

Of course, it wasn't always an eight-hour day. Historically, people used to work brutal hours - fourteen hours a day, etc.

Humans have the ability to keep working for long periods of time. This makes sense given our size, our warm-bloodedness, etc. We have our ebb moments, which are ideal for siesta time.

What might change that?

I look around at the animals of the world for inspiration. Tiny mammals like mice tend to have very high energy for short periods of time, and then flop down for a rest, and then go back at it. Cats have incredibly high intensity sometimes, but sleep a lot. Some animals have stamina for hours, and some don't.

This is useful to consider, because for whatever world you're creating, it's good to consider how they organize their daily time. Especially if you're dealing with aliens, it might be useful to ask yourself how their energy levels translate into work patterns. The difference between a nocturnal creature and a diurnal creature is obvious, but there are more subtle things you can do to make a big difference.

As my friend Janice recently asked me when I was working on something for my otter story, "These are otters. Why would they sit while working?"

It was a wake-up question. I'd recently seen a video of a baby otter playing with toys in someone's home, and one of the things the film said was that the human was a specialist working with the otter while it was out of its natural enclosure - not someone keeping the thing for a pet. If you'd seen the energy of this thing, you'd see why. It would get bored one day and tear your house apart.

Mind you, my aliens are big, and this tends to change metabolic rates (whales and elephants move more slowly than rats and mice!). However, I figure they could still be on the otter side of the metabolic pattern relative to humans, and come across as very energetic.

It changed the way I thought about the organization of their days, and also about the organization of their work spaces, and all kinds of things.

I encourage you to consider this if you're doing something similar.