1. Do we need to know a definition of a word, in order to understand its meaning?
After many debates and conversations in class, my opinion is set on the fact that you don't need the definition of a word to know its meaning. I say this for two reasons. My first reason, is based on the activity that we did in class today. In the activity, one person had to act out situations using no words and the other had to guess what's going on. My partner and I managed to crack 6 situations, using no words at all. We found that displaying emotions, or doing an activity helped give the words in the situation away. The second reason, is the fact the question I thought to myself. For every single word I learnt, did I know its definition? Obviously, my answer was no, which further leads me to believe we don't need the definition of a word to understand its meaning.
2. Do words have meanings or do we give them meanings?
In my opinion we give words meaning. A humorous example of this would be the word "wicked". To illustrate this, I would like to use Hip Teen Sam enact a situation with his mate Bill.
Sam : Bro, did you see the new movie "Boss Killz"? It was wicked man!
Bill: Sure was!
But, if Sam was to use the word wicked sometime back in the 1950's and Bill was from that time period:
Sam: Man, did you see Pele's goal, that was wicked!
Bill: No man, I think Pele is a nice human being. (Snickers at crazy Sam)
As you can see from this example, wicked has two different meanings. But in the more modern example, us humans have given wicked a new meaning.
Wicked!
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