When I think about language and linguistics, I often do it through the lens of logic and so I sometimes apply these terms to language. This might not be the ‘normal’ way we use the terminology, but I find it a useful way to discuss the language being used.
Language is the way we try and convey our thoughts and ideas to each other. The words and descriptions give our ideas form in other minds. Effective use of language means we build pictures in others’ minds that closely resemble those in our own.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and its focus is the systematic investigation of the properties of particular languages as well as the characteristics of language in general. Studying linguistics can better help you understand the world around you as well as improve your communications with others by giving you insight into how they are using the language, thus helping you circumnavigate problems within language.
One problem comes when we are not aware that some words are used in multiple ways or we believe there is only one correct definition of a word.
This can make conversation break down and turn into a semantic battle instead of holding the more important or interesting conversation.
My following analysis should be understood as how I think about language, and not necessarily how it would be described within a linguistic setting. I will, where I am able, describe how these terms might be used within linguistics, or how someone might use the term from a linguistic perspective to convey a point.
There are 3 concepts I use to think about language in general.
Validity, Soundness, and Legitimacy.
Whilst considering the above, context plays a part.
When considering Validity, Soundness, and Legitimacy from a linguistics perspective, we should understand these are not terms used. Generally, they are used either by folks who are linguistics specialists trying to convey points to lay folks like me in terms they think we will understand, or they are used by lay folks like me to convey points through mediums we understand.
The important factor within linguistics is utility. When people use validity and legitimacy they are most likely, from a linguistics perspective, referring to if something is meaningful, communicative, successful, accepted, and a common/standard.
Someone that specialises in linguistics might use validity or legitimacy because there is more utility in using those terms when talking to someone like me. Soundness is not even mentioned.
So what do I mean by validity, legitimacy and soundness?
Validity
In logic, validity speaks of an argument’s formation. The premises need to be coherent and if true, entail the conclusion.
P1. If P then Q
P2. P
C. Q
From a linguistic perspective, validity isn’t really a term used but it would mean that it conforms to the common sound patterns and syntactical structures of a given language as accepted by the majority of listeners. This would mean, that there is a subjective element to this which requires acceptance of your audience through what you mean. This also means that a word is valid in some groups, not in others, and is a significant point of contention in groups of mixed opinions.
This can be a good reason to stipulate how you are using a word that you know is polysemous – “I know it could be defined x way, but for the sake of this conversation I am using it y way”. We can hope that by phrasing it this way, your audience will tentatively accept your use, making it at least valid for that conversation.
With the way I see language, and how subjective and contextual meanings are, I speak of any coherent use as valid. You’re simply an explanation away from describing how you are using the word, and whilst people can reject that, I see that as a pointless rejection.
You can use the word apple to mean the round fruit of a tree of the rose family, which typically has thin green or red skin and crisp flesh or the company or even something off the wall like an umbrella.
Much like we defined in Impossibly Possible – Logical and Metaphysical Possibility Explained, where a logical possibility is something that is coherently formed, with no contradictions, this is the same as your use of a particular word. If you say a word to mean a particular thing, and that meaning doesn’t contradict itself then it is a valid use of a word.
You could throw it in a syllogism like this:
P1. If I say [this word] I mean [this thing]
P2. I say [this word]
C. I mean [this thing]
Another, and probably better, way to think of it is akin to the law of identity (A=A). The identity, or definition, you use for a word is consistent with how you define that word. Combined with the law of Non-Contradiction. The word cannot mean both itself and not itself at the same time (A <> A ^ ¬A).
So, at its base level, all word use is valid. However, if you were to replace the conclusion with something other than what you define in your premise then you are not adhering to your own valid use.
P1. if I say apple I mean the fruit
P2. I say apple
C. I mean taxes
In other words, you are breaking the law of identity resulting in A = ¬A.
Of course, it’s unlikely someone would do this except in instances where they stipulate a use the use of different definitions further on in the conversation without clarifying.
So the next thing we consider is context.
Context and Validity
Context defines the word’s use. Some words have multiple meanings (are polysemous) so the context plays a part in whether they are a valid use. Let’s use the apple again.
If you’re an apple farmer talking to other apple farmers about this year’s apple crop the context would dictate what you mean by apple unless you stipulate a different use or there is more context like, “I got a new Apple phone.”
The same can be said for if you’re at a technology convention and you mention Apple. It is unlikely you mean the fruit unless you say something like, “I’m hungry, has anyone got an apple?”
If in either of the situations you are using ‘apple’ to mean ‘bumbershoot’, whilst it may be personally valid it’s not contextually valid. We could say that this contextual validity is actually speaking of soundness.
Soundness
In logic, soundness is not only a valid argument, but one where the premises are actually true so therefore the conclusion is necessarily true.
P1. All mammals are animals
P2. Elephants are mammals
C. Elephants are animals
You might notice that the syllogisms I mentioned about validity would be sound in the instance you meant what you said and said what you meant, but there is a bit more to sound terminology demarcation than personal validity.
When I speak about a definition’s soundness, there is an additional layer of analysis. Not only are we looking for the validity mentioned before, but we are also looking for potential issues and optimal use.
One of the markers is the contextual validity I mentioned before, but there are some others.
It comes down to an examination of the way the word is being used, hence the context, but also things like the clarity of the use, whilst valid so it doesn’t contain a contradiction in itself, does this lead to a subsequent contradiction, could this use lead to fallacious reasoning and so on. It could be argued that soundness is but a part of the overall optimal use of a word and some of the negatives don’t strictly relate to soundness. So, if it is your preference, feel free to replace soundness with optimal in the context of this section.
P1. If a definition is valid, clear, concise, contextually correct, coherent, and not fallacious, it is sound.
P2. This definition is valid, clear, concise, contextually correct, coherent, and not fallacious.
C. This definition is sound.
From a linguistic perspective, this isn’t actually a consideration. If you have conveyed your meaning accurately, then that is all that matters.
Broad Terminology
One of the biggest problems is overly broad terminology.
Let’s think about cars and vehicles in general.
Everything is either a car or not a car. (c v ¬c).
A car is a specific kind of vehicle. Thus, a car is in the set of vehicles. (c ∈ V).
A car is a four-wheeled (sometimes 3) road vehicle that is powered by an engine and is able to carry a small number of people and/or items.
A vehicle is a thing used for transporting people or goods, such as a car, lorry, plane or boat.
So, cars are in the set of vehicles but not all vehicles are cars.
If someone was to use the word car for all vehicles it has some problems, even though it might be personally valid.
1. It’s overly broad, especially considering there is an alternative name for the set already in use.
2. It’s unclear what type of vehicle you are referring to.
3. It doesn’t seem to resemble normative, common, contextual/colloquial use – so you won’t be easily understood by anyone.
4. Cars already have a normative use, so you will be easily misunderstood.
5. It doesn’t resemble a historical use.
As such, I would say that using cars as vehicles is pretty unsound. Even if caught on somewhere and became common vernacular, I’d argue it still wouldn’t be sound as there are better, clearer more concise terms.
Let’s assume for a minute, though, that before the word vehicle, there was only the car. The car was the first invented (in this hypothetical) and as such all methods of transportation were called cars.
Over time, people created more and more types of cars. Ones that floated. Ones that hovered on water. Ones that flew in the air. Ones that had two wheels. Ones that have circa 18 wheels and were used for transporting mass quantities of goods
It became difficult to constantly describe the car in question so they came up with specific names for them, the ones you know today.
The car, as the original car, remained a car, but the others got new names.
As they are no longer called cars anymore they need a name for the set of these motorised people/product transporters.
They choose Vehicle. This is derived from the Latin vehiculum, from vehere ‘carry’. Vehicles carry people or produce, so it makes sense.
Cars are now part of the set vehicles.
Whilst this is a purely fictitious evolution of the language, it does show how it could evolve. Cars were generally called machines, automobiles or horseless carriages.
The first recorded use of the word vehicle was in the 1650’s and that was after the first use of the word car.
“Car” is actually a very old word, first appearing in English around 1300. The root of “car” is the Latin “carrus,” meaning a two-wheeled wagon, but the Latin word itself has Celtic roots, and “car” arrived in English by a roundabout route through Old French and Anglo-Norman.
http://www.word-detective.com/2014/12/car/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CCar%E2%80%9D%20is%20actually%20a%20very,Old%20French%20and%20Anglo%2DNorman.
So, we can see the word car actually has a long history and a variety of uses but it now means something very specific. Even today, though, the context can alter the definition of car.
Back to the hypothetical, though, let’s say that someone knew that vehicles used to be called cars. They have decided that this is the correct use and will refer to all vehicles as cars. They will even argue that this is the original and therefore the correct use.
This is problematic, as the reasoning is fallacious. It’s what is known as an etymological fallacy.
It also has the problems mentioned before. There’s now more concise and precise terminology. Most people won’t understand the use. Most are not aware of the history of the word and so on.
So, even if the original use for vehicles was cars, we can see that it would be problematic to maintain the use.
But let’s say that the original use catches on again, there are certain communities, or groups, of people that do understand this use, in fact, some are brought up only ever learning about this use.
They start arguing that the use of car as a specific type of vehicle is wrong. That these people don’t know anything about cars. That vehicle and car mean the same thing. They even reject any evidence about the evolution of the language and start adding modifiers to cars to describe the cars. The flying car the floating car and so on.
There are already specific words for the type of vehicle but because the terminology has been ignored with this reversion to car, we now need modifiers to add in types of car.
Fallacy aside, we can see the issue with the broad terminology and need for the modifying descriptors.
I would conclude this use unsound, even if it would be a legitimate use.
Legitimacy
From a linguistics perspective, legitimacy isn’t exactly a word used either (It’s almost like I shouldn’t have mentioned linguistics, right?). However, it is another word you will hear people use in discussions about definitions. Like they will say it is a valid use, they will talk about a legitimate use.
I can’t tell you what each person who mentions legitimacy means, but I can try and convey what could be meant from both a linguistic and personal perspective.
Linguistic legitimacy doesn’t differ too much from linguistic validity. And not only because neither of those terms is really used within linguistics. It would mean something like “accepted as meaningful or functional within a given language”. In other words, is the use; meaningful, communicative, successful, accepted, common/standard? This, again, is why you might have one person acknowledging multiple legitimate uses of a word, and another arguing that use is not legitimate. Like validity, legitimacy isn’t a particularly good word to use from a linguistic perspective due to the subjective acceptance required, so it doesn’t really tell us anything useful, at least from an analytical point of view. So what could we be speaking of from an analytical point of view? To do this, we should examine how legitimacy is commonly used.
Legitimacy is common in discussions of political philosophy and power.
Within this, there are usually two types of legitimacy.
- Might makes right; the ability to take power or overpower the will of the people and maintain control.
- Legitimacy through consent/rule of law.
When it comes to language, the consent option is closer to what makes a legitimate definition. That said, we can probably think of examples of an organisation enforcing a single definition.
Essentially, if lots of people are using a definition it becomes a legitimate definition. So, private language has a little bit of legitimacy, colloquialisms a bit more, common vernacular even more so and so on.
There are some things that can increase legitimacy too.
Being in a dictionary*.
Being in multiple dictionaries.
Being used in university or technical dictionaries.
Being defined in academic papers that way.
Being able to justify a particular use.
Soundness.
Translations and etymology.
*It might be argued that the dictionary is descriptive and an author could put anything in there, but the way most dictionaries work is that they look for the common use of words and include them, so something being in a dictionary means that there is at least some commonality of use, multiple dictionaries means it’s less localised, uni & tech dictionaries are of a higher standard, and so on.
Soundness and legitimacy are not the same things.
A legitimate use ought to be valid but not necessarily sound, but a valid use won’t necessarily be legitimate.
If we think back to the apple example.
The farmers talking about the fruit is legitimate and sound.
The folks at the tech convention talking about the company is legitimate and sound.
The farmers changing the context of the conversation to their new apple phone is legitimate and sound.
Someone using apple to mean bumbershoot might be personally valid, in the sense they know what they mean by the word and they are using it that way, but it’s not a sound use, nor is it a legitimate use.
It’s not legitimate because they are the only one using it that way. It’s not sound as; no one knows they are using it a different way, the context of the discussion, the word is commonly used for other things and so on.
It does seem like there is a cross-over of legitimacy and soundness here, so how do they differ?
If we think back to the hypothetical with cars and vehicles – we ended with a situation where there were many folks that were using cars to mean vehicle but claiming it was the original and therefore correct definition.
The use is legitimate as it had gained legitimacy through common use, but it is unsound due to the fallacious reasoning and other problems we mentioned.
So, whilst soundness can add to legitimacy, and some of the reasoning for legitimacy can add to soundness, they are not necessarily the same thing. The common denominator here is validity.
The point is, pretty much any definition of a word is valid because that is how language works.
Summary of Valid, Sound and Legitimate Language
Based on my use:
A definition is valid if you are consistent with a particular word’s use and don’t switch definitions without stipulation. (A = A) ^ (A <> A ^ ¬A)
A definition is sound if it is valid, clear, concise, coherent, contextually correct and arguably (one of) the best, most useful, and accurate definition(s) available.
A definition’s legitimacy is more of a sliding scale, with more factors adding more legitimacy. common/popular use is one of the main factors that give a word legitimacy, in fact, if you’re the only person using the word, you can argue it’s not a legitimate use. Other factors include:
Being in a dictionary.
Being in multiple dictionaries.
Being used in university or technical dictionaries.
Being defined in academic papers that way.
Being able to justify a particular use.
Soundness.
Translations and etymology.
Within Linguistics, these terms are not used and are discussed differently, but the equivalent could be:
Valid: conforms to the common sound patterns and syntactical structures of a given language as accepted by the majority of listeners.
Legitimate: accepted as meaningful or functional within a given language.
Sound: not used.
Essentially valid and legitimate could be used interchangeably from a linguistic perspective but neither tell us much more than if a particular use is accepted or common in a particular language.
I’m Joe. I write under the name Davidian, not only because it is a Machine Head song I enjoy but because it was a game character I used to role-play that was always looking to better himself.
This is one of many things I hope to do with Answers In Reason.
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