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Essay on ?Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think?

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Title: “Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think” Evaluate the extent to which the characteristics Sartre claims for words affect - negatively or positively - different Areas of Knowledge.

The limits of knowledge that the topic implies are the limits of language and how well it approaches truth. There are a number of definitions of language. Everybody has there own term of what language stands for. For example, Chomsky says that language is a system of sounds put together to form phrases, which are then translated into a person’s mind. Adler says that language is a system of sounds that are created to form a way of communication, which can be translated in the human mind. What I found is that language shows the proof of …show more content…

Because every person has a different meaning for a word, there can never be a true meaning. “ Therefore it was necessary that he should be able to use these sounds as signs of internal conceptions; and to make them stand as marks for the ideas within his own mind, whereby they might be made known to others, and the others, and the thoughts of men’s minds be conveyed from one to another.” Having words be interpreted by mere sounds is not enough because even like that, it wouldn’t be enough for the perfection of language. Because words have a multiple range of meanings, it could be confusing to a person that didn’t understand the idea of sound in the word. “It may also lead us a little towards the original of all our notions and knowledge, if we remark how great a dependence our words have on common sensible ideas; and how those which are made use of to stand for actions and notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and from obvious sensible ideas are transferred to more abstruse significations, and made to stand for ideas that come not under the cognizance of our senses; to imagine, apprehend, comprehend, adhere, conceive, instill, disgust, disturbance, tranquility, etc., are all words taken from the operations of sensible things, and applied to certain modes of thinking. Spirit, in its primary signification, is breath; angel, a

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