Iâm edging ever closer to finishing my book on the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis. Itâs now in its third passâa mostly subtractive process of streamlining, consolidating, and hacking away at redundancies. The front matter, of course, demands just as much attention, starting with the Preface.
The opening anecdoteâa true yet apocryphal gemâdates back to 2018, which is evidence of just how long Iâve been chewing on this idea. It involves a divorce court judge, a dose of linguistic ambiguity, and my ongoing scepticism about the utility of language in complex, interpretative domains.
At the time, my ex-wifeâs lawyer was petitioning the court to restrict me from spending any money outside our marriage. This included a demand for recompense for any funds already spent. I was asked, point-blank: Had I given another woman a gift?
Seeking clarity, I asked the judge to define gift. The response was less than amusedâa glare, a sneer, but no definition. Left to my own devices, I answered no, relying on my personal definition: something given with no expectation of return or favour. My reasoning, then as now, stemmed from a deep mistrust of altruism.
The court, however, didnât share my philosophical detours. The injunction came down: I was not to spend any money outside the marital arrangement. Straightforward? Hardly. At the time, I was also in a rock band and often brought meals for the group. Was buying Chipotle for the band now prohibited?
The judgeâs response dripped with disdain. Of course, that wasnât the intent, they said, but the language of the injunction was deliberately broadâambiguous enough to cover whatever they deemed inappropriate. The phrase donât spend money on romantic interests would have sufficed, but clarity seemed to be a liability. Instead, the court opted for what I call the Justice Stewart Doctrine of Legal Ambiguity: I know it when I see it.
Unsurprisingly, the marriage ended. My ex-wife and I, however, remain close; our separation in 2018 was final, but our friendship persists. Discussing my book recently, I mentioned this story, and she told me something new: her lawyer had confided that the judge disliked me, finding me smug.
This little revelation cemented something Iâd already suspected: power relations, in the Foucauldian sense, pervade even our most banal disputes. Itâs why Foucault makes a cameo in the book alongside Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Saussure, Derrida, Borges, and even Gödel.
This anecdote is just one straw on the poor camelâs back of my linguistic grievances, a life filled with moments where languageâs insufficiency has revealed itself. And yet, I found few others voicing my position. Hence, a book.
I aim to self-publish in early 2025âget it off my chest and into the world. Maybe then I can stop wittering on about it. Or, more likely, I wonât.
The cat is out. And it has been replaced by a weasel. Yes, dear reader, youâve entered the strange, paradoxical world of Schrödingerâs Weasel, a universe where words drift in a haze of semantic uncertainty, their meanings ambushed and reshaped by whoever gets there first.
Now, you may be asking yourself, “Haven’t we been here before?” Both yes and no. While the phenomenon of weasel wordsâterms that suck out all substance from a statement, leaving behind a polite but vacuous huskâhas been dissected and discussed at length, thereâs a new creature on the scene. Inspired by Essentially Contested Concepts, W.B. Gallieâs landmark essay from 1956, and John Kekesâ counterpoint in A Reconsideration, I find myself stepping further into the semantic thicket. Iâve long held a grudge against weasel words, but Schrödinger words are their sinister cousins, capable of quantum linguistic acrobatics.
To understand Schrödinger words, we need to get cosy with a little quantum mechanics. Think of a Schrödinger word as a linguistic particle in a state of superposition. This isnât the lazy drift of semantic shiftâwords that gently evolve over centuries, shaped by the ebb and flow of time and culture. No, these Schrödinger words behave more like quantum particles: observed from one angle, they mean one thing; from another, something completely different. They represent a political twilight zone, meanings oscillating between utopia and dystopia, refracted through the eye of the ideological beholder.
in the realm of Schrödingerâs Weasel, language becomes a battlefield where words are held hostage to polarising meanings
Take socialism, that darling of the Left and bugbear of the Right. To someone on the American political left, socialism conjures visions of Scandinaviaâs welfare state, a society that looks after its people, where healthcare and education are universal rights. But say socialism to someone on the right, and you might find yourself facing the ghost of Stalinâs Soviet Union â gulags, oppression, the Cold War spectre of forced equality. The same word, but two worlds apart. This isnât simply a âdifference of opinion.â This is linguistic quantum mechanics at work, where meaning is determined by the observerâs political perspective. In fact, in the case of Schrödinger words, the observerâs interpretation not only reveals meaning but can be weaponised to change it, on the fly, at a whim.
What, then, is a Schrödinger word? Unlike the classic weasel words, which diffuse responsibility (âsome sayâ), Schrödinger words donât just obscure meaning; they provoke it and elicit strong, polarised responses by oscillating between two definitions. They are meaning-shifters, intentionally wielded to provoke division and rally allegiances. They serve as shibboleths and dog whistles, coded signals that change as they cross ideological boundaries. They are the linguistic weasels, alive and dead in the political discourse, simultaneously uniting and dividing depending on the audience. These words are spoken with the ease of conventional language, yet they pack a quantum punch, morphing as they interact with the listener’s biases.
Consider woke, a term once employed as a rallying cry for awareness and social justice. Today, its mere utterance can either sanctify or vilify. The ideological Left may still use it with pride â a banner for the politically conscious. But to the Right, woke has become a pejorative, shorthand for zealous moralism and unwelcome change. In the blink of an eye, woke transforms from a badge of honour into an accusation, from an earnest call to action into a threat. Its meaning is suspended in ambiguity, but that ambiguity is precisely what makes it effective. No one can agree on what woke âreally meansâ anymore, and thatâs the point. Itâs not merely contested; itâs an arena, a battlefield.
What of fascism, another Schrödinger word, swirling in a storm of contradictory meanings? For some, itâs the historical spectre of jackboots, propaganda, and the violence of Hitler and Mussolini. For others, itâs a term of derision for any political stance perceived as overly authoritarian. It can mean militarism and far-right nationalism, or it can simply signify any overreach of government control, depending on whoâs shouting. The Left may wield it to paint images of encroaching authoritarianism; the Right might invoke it to point fingers at the âthought policeâ of progressive culture. Fascism, once specific and terrifying, has been pulled and stretched into meaninglessness, weaponised to instil fear in diametrically opposed directions.
Schrödingerâs Weasel, then, is more than a linguistic curiosity. Itâs a testament to the insidious power of language in shaping â and distorting â reality. By existing in a state of perpetual ambiguity, Schrödinger words serve as instruments of division. They are linguistic magic tricks, elusive yet profoundly effective, capturing not just the breadth of ideological differences but the emotional intensity they provoke. They are not innocent or neutral; they are ideological tools, words stripped of stable meaning and retooled for a momentâs political convenience.
Gallieâs notion of essentially contested concepts allows us to see how words like justice, democracy, and freedom have long been arenas of ideological struggle, their definitions tugged by factions seeking to claim the moral high ground. But Schrödinger words go further â theyâre not just arenas but shifting shadows, their meanings purposefully hazy, with no intention of arriving at a universally accepted definition. They are not debated in the spirit of mutual understanding but deployed to deepen the rift between competing sides. Kekesâ critique in A Reconsideration touches on this, suggesting that the contestation of terms like freedom and democracy still strives for some level of shared understanding. Schrödinger words, by contrast, live in the gap, forever contested, forever unresolved, their ambiguity cherished rather than lamented.
Ultimately, in the realm of Schrödingerâs Weasel, language becomes a battlefield where words are held hostage to polarising meanings. Their superposition is deliberate, their ambiguity cultivated. In this brave new lexicon, we see language not as a bridge of understanding but as a weapon of mass disinformation â a trick with all the precision of quantum mechanics but none of the accountability. Whether this ambiguity will one day collapse into meaning, as particles do when measured, remains uncertain. Until then, Schrödingerâs Weasel prowls, its meaning indeterminate, serving whichever agenda is quickest to claim it.
Philosophics 