Meaning

[Viviana]

Explain the three principles involved in meaning.
How important is it to have a clear idea of the nature of our choices and guesses?
Do ethical principles help? How?

[Graciela Cristina Mené]

The three principles are the exclusion, the guessing and the context ones.
The exclusion principle refers to the ability to exclude words, or not, for better understanding. As an example we can mention the word "bed" as "twin bed", "single bed", "hamock", "futon", "camp bed", etc. We can exclude words in order to mention the type of bed we are referring to. This exclusion has to do with the social languages the speakers speak. The more different social languages, the more difficult to understand the meaning of the word (or idea).
The guessing principle is linked to our basis, and it can be seen by watching our behaviour. Example: If we were ready to go camping, we would be talking about "a hamock" to relax on under the trees, or about "a camp bed" to sleep in the tent. We'd never speak about a futon or a single bed. We, then, could discover what type of bed we were talking about, even though we just mentioned the word "bed".
The context principle -considering the example above- helps us to make assumptions about the type of bed we are talking about. If the context were "the camping", the type of bed could be a "camp bed", if the conversation took place in a hotel, the word would be determined as a "single bed" or "bunk beds".
The three principles -exclusion, guessing and context principles- together help us to make a good understanding of the meaning of words.

It is very important because the choices and guesses we make can be more or less conscious, conventionalized or routinized. However, nothing can stop us to bring the unconscious aspects to our consciousness and to make us observe our social practices into a determined social environment.

The ethical principle is relevant since through this we can show our implicit ideology explicitly. For example, in “Cronica TV” there is a title that says “Tres personas y un Boliviano murieron”. We have to be very careful when we speak because unconciously we can show what we really think to the hearer and be thoroughly surprised of ourselves finding our negative and hidden point of view going outside.