Symbols can have more than one meaning for the same person. Words are symbols that have been developed by cultures to represent objects, concepts, actions, characteristics, and conditions. A collection of words and the ways in which they are interrelated is language . Language Is arbitrary. When a particular society agrees to follow a particular set of rules, it creates the conventions, or practices, of that particular language.
Meanings Are in people.
Words are empty vessels waiting for people to assign them meaning. Misunderstandings occur when the words we use do not refer to the thing we intended. This happens because the meanings are in the people, who assign them to the symbols, not in the symbols themselves. The accepted meaning of a word for the majority of the population is its detonation . A particular association of a word is its connotation .