Linguistic Entrapment

I think most of you have experienced moments when you just cannot find the exact words to express your ideas. Of course, there are some words that pop up in your mind that might best express the idea. But they just cannot do the job in the way that you expect because they do not exactly represent the nature of your idea. In such a situation, you normally opt to go for words that approximate the meaning you want to express. But, still the chosen words do not exactly represent the idea. Then in our daily life we hear expressions like “ Brain Wash” which does not really resemble the idea of “Car Wash”, or “ Transfer of Knowledge” that does not exactly share the same meaning as “money transfer”, or “Knowledge Management” that cannot be equated to the way people manage a firm, or “Psy-War” without bloodshed or explosion. We are also familiar with sentences like “ We beat them in the debate”-we know for sure that there is no physical injury, or “The teacher killed my interest in the subject” – absolutely, no need to contact an undertaker, or “Open your heart for someone”- ask a surgeon whether or not heart has a door or window.

The use of metaphorical expressions to convey meanings is a common phenomenon. However, there is a tendency that, when a metaphorical expression is over used, it will gradually lose its metaphorical characteristics. Finally, it will arrive at a stage when the expression is understood denotatively. Such a situation is potentially misleading because “Transfer of Knowledge” would imply that knowledge is linear and a transferable, just like other transferable entities, and “ Knowledge Management” would mean the activity in managing what people have in their mind. Then, logically, there could be a Department of Knowledge Management that offers an MKM (Master of Knowledge Management) program. (Pictures: Courtesy www.picsearch.com)