When a word becomes too large for what it contains

Some words help at the beginning of a research process because they make it possible to hold together a territory that is not yet clearly differentiated. They serve as provisional umbrella terms: they prevent observations that seem related from being scattered too early, before their differences are clear enough.

But a word can also become too broad. It can continue to give the impression that we are speaking about one thing while several phenomena, functions or statuses are beginning to separate.

Same word ≠ same representation.
Shared word ≠ established agreement.
Naming ≠ distinguishing.

What an overloaded word does

An overloaded word can group several phenomena or several functions under the same label. It can be provisionally useful, especially when the work does not yet have enough resolution to separate what needs to be separated.

It can also create an illusion of agreement. Two people may use the same word and believe they are speaking about the same reality, while their frameworks, criteria or ways of dividing things up differ.

Conversely, it can turn a difference in framework into a false disagreement. The interlocutors seem to oppose one another, when they are not speaking about exactly the same level, use or status of the word.

The problem is therefore not always that the word is bad. Sometimes it has simply stopped being precise enough for the work underway. It masks a distinction that has become necessary.

The example of understanding

The laboratory long kept the word “understanding” because it made it possible to hold together a territory that was still not finely discriminated.

As the level of detail increased, several dimensions began to distinguish themselves: availability, participation, weight, revision, orientation, status, functional rights, and so on.

These dimensions are not presented here as a general definition of understanding. They only indicate that the word was beginning to contain too many differences to remain sufficiently discriminating in the laboratory’s work.

The problem was not necessarily that the word was false. It had become too broad for the level of detail the research had reached.

An inverted Babel problem

The problem is not always that we speak different languages. Sometimes we use the same words to speak about different realities or different ways of dividing them up.

Words such as understanding, risk, respect, intelligence, consciousness or urgency can circulate between people, disciplines or organizations. They seem shared. Yet depending on the context, they may designate a lived experience, a measurement, an obligation, a capacity, a hypothesis, a practical priority or an institutional status.

These examples are not general definitions. They only serve to show how a shared word can hide different ways of dividing things up.

Translating without flattening

In interdisciplinary translation, the work does not only consist in finding an equivalent word. It also consists in checking what the word carries: its original framework, its function, its level of evidence, its limits and the differences it risks erasing.

An overloaded word can therefore be useful at one stage of the work, then become insufficient at another. The important moment is when the research must decide whether the word still helps observation or whether it is beginning to mask what is becoming visible.

At what point does a word help less than it conceals?

🍅 We note. We observe. We translate.