Definitions

Although it’s not most highly intellectual piece of information in the reading, I found the section on definitions to be strangely intriguing. Being a psych major, my mind set it focused on individuals and the workings of their mind and how they reflect in their behavior and in the book it states that “definitions” are more often “subjective construction”. As I read that I thought to myself how very true that statement is. Our own definitions are based on our knowledge and experience with it. Even the person who entered the definition of a word into dictionary.com had to compile their definition from various perspectives. The book also relates the world and making sense of it to mental representations which, to us, are the definitions. The definition of what makes a house a home, is representative of what we know are our likes and dislikes and both of those come from experience and remembering how we felt at that time. Similarly, fashion comes from our own definitions and interpretations as well.
The same can be said with conversations and communications as well. In a discussion, one person’s way of getting their point across may be very different from the person to whom they’re speaking with. One person’s definition of communicating can be drastically different from the others and this point is very well explained by the psychological approach, which I obviously took too. :)