It's only words

Without going into the philosophy of language (yet), words are interesting.

What I'm thinking about just now is words that we use without necissarily thinking about what they mean. An example I see a lot on the news is 'insurgent'. What is an insurgent, and are they really that bad?
Also, grooming, in reference to paedophiles grooming children in chat-rooms. What do we actually mean by that?
These probably aren't the best examples, and they're perfectly good words to use if we know what we mean by them.

What about things like 'race'. We'd all agree that discriminating against someone on the grounds of race is bad. The first problem with that, is that the existance of human races is a theory propagated by racists. It therefore adds legitimacy to theories we are using it to disagree with. Vicious circle!
The second problem, is what do we mean by bad? What makes something bad?
Without going into different ethics systems, it's not something a lot of people could answer.

Then what about words like 'love'? What, in the immortal words of Haddaway, is love? Few people could define it, yet we all talk about it.

I don't think we have much choice, but it's maybe important to realise we don't always know what we mean. Afterall, how is anyone else supposed to know if you don't?

andrew