We all speak. Some people even study speech. They are called Semanticologists…or some thing like that. I just made that word up. You see, I always wonder why so few new words enter the english language. Plenty do, don’t get me wrong. Each year the Oxford English Dick turns out a long list of words that you thought were either slang or you hadn’t heard of. But now, there they are in print! Language doesn’t have DNA but if it did it would be evolving. Keeping up with what people are saying to each other.

So you would think that when a new word was needed, there wouldn’t be a problem. But there is. People don’t like to invent new words. ‘You just made that up!’ ‘What, Semanticologist? Yes, good isn’t it?’

I can think of a couple of problems that begin to unravel into solutions, once you enter semantics. Take ‘gay marriage’. Some say that’s a contradiction in terms, others don’t. People who are gay want to be treated like everyone else. Hard to find an argument why they shouldn’t, but they should not be in denial of semantic differentiation. What I mean is, why not think up a new word to describe a gay marriage? Mine suggestion would be, wait for it…’parriage’. People would get parried. It tells everyone it’s a gay wedding saving them having to find out that information some other way. That’s what good new words should do. They should fill a gap.

Apparently the lawyers have had a very difficult time rewriting the civil marriage laws using just the word marriage and ignoring gender. Lots of funnny crossings out and looking for alternatives to ‘she’ and ‘he’. They probably settled for ‘each humaniod of non-consequential gender’ or something like that. All because no one thought of a new word for a new situation. I hope gay people would accept that parriage would be exactly the same as marriage in law. Equal rights – everything, and passports would have to be changed and loads of other official forms but, why not? We should not have ignored the issue for so long, particularly those who follow religious laws, famous for intransigence.

As well as finding new words to fit new thinking, we can bring about new thinking with a new word. I have been thinking for many decades about dreaming and television. The question I ask myself is whether films and TV bring about a dream state in the viewer. Look around you in the cinema and you will see people who are dreaming, but if the fire alarm went off, they would be on the pavement in minutes. That’s not like dreaming when you are asleep. Sleep dreaming is generally out of control, irrational. One dream state is being controlled, the other not. But there’s no word for the state of mind you enter when you are being told a story, watching a play or video.

If dreaming is defined as a ‘a sequential series of perceptions outside time’ or something like that, then we need to define it more tightly for each dreaming situation. Sleeping is the obvious one. Let’s just call it ‘dreaming’ as we all know what we mean. Then ‘lucid dreaming’ is waking up in a dream, fully conscious. So how about ‘controlled dreaming’ for the dream state when your dream state is not your own but you are being led through a sequential series of perceptions outside time.

Not complicated words but complicated thinking made clearer by a new word or two.

Words don’t cost anything, so when we have a problem and are looking for a solution, I suggest you find a semanticologist.