RE: What is the Importance of Definition in Communicating with Each Other?
There is an old guideline in managing communication. All we need to do is answer this question: "Did message sent equal message received?"
Now we can do this by defining things that may be ambiguous. In my Jurisprudence Law classes we used to do this as an exercise (now 40 years ago). Every concept we used in a discussion had to be defined. "What do you mean by?" was the retort. What we soon discovered is that conversation became very long and inconclusive. So we needed to find other ways.
And of course my ambiguous is not the same as your ambiguous.
In two way communication it is easy. Ask the person receiving the message to play back in their words what they heard. In a social media conversation we can do this through comments - ask questions and respond by saying "when you said this did you mean that?" All this takes is a little time to reflect before shooting back.
In one way communication, you are right - some definition is needed. Media organisations work very hard at being consistent in the way they use terms and concepts - we could all borrow some of that.
That may be a bit obtuse, for every damn word... yes that's highly inefficient... wrong methodology. You only need to verify definitions WHEN a misunderstanding occurs. Being able to recognize when a misunderstanding occurs is required in order to interject with more precise definitions.
But it does take long to be on the same page. And this is why people don't do this work, because it's "long" and "boring". But... if we simply put in minimal effort to start off with, learn accurate definitions, and all be on the same page of terms, then we wouldn't have to deal with semantic misunderstandings, over, and over, and over, and over, and over... I think you get the point. We aren't correcting our misalignment in symbols, so we stay misaligned with each other, and then because it's so "complex" to fix, we just think we're going to find another "solution" while not dealing with the linguistic ignorance ? Ha!
But I agree, rewording something works. It's just another tactic to evaluate a common understanding. If you reword it, and show you understand it, then the person can agree that you are on the same page. It still doesn't deal with the original confusion in definition of terms. In rewording and find differences, then we can define more precisely. I support using both. Definitely trying to define each word like you did in your class is a waste of time. It's when it's required that the clarity of definition can be stated to get people back on track.
Thanks for the feedback. Peace.
It was a class in Jurisprudence - the theory and philosophy of law. It was deliberately obtuse