One Term, Many Meanings - Why Are We Surprised?

David Eddy kindly supplied me with the following military tale:

A true story heard around the Pentagon goes like this:

One reason the services have trouble operating jointly is that they don't speak the same language.

"secure a building" has been found to have the following meanings...

• Navy would turn off the lights and lock the doors.
• Army would occupy the building so no one could enter. 
• Marines would assault the building, capture it, and defend it with suppressive fire and close combat. 
• Air Force, on the other hand, would take out a three-year lease with an option to buy.

I think that we can all appreciate the humor in this, but must recognize that there is something deep and important about it.  But what is the moral in this tale?

The story shows that "secure a building" means different things to four different groups.  In each case the term refers to a different concept.  And in each case the concept is clearly defined.  The concepts are all very distinct - there is no chance of confusing them.

However, the four groups are all part of the same overall organization - the Armed Forces of the United States.  It is a common assumption that one organization is a monolithic semantic community.   The reality is that enterprises are often mosaics of different subcultures, who each see the enterprise through a different ontology.  At least, this is my observation.  I would like to find some research material on it, rather than anecdotes like the one quoted above.

The view that that enterprises are mosaics of subcultures also goes against the idea that there is a single data model - a "single reality", or a "single version of the truth" - that must underlie every enterprise.

Saying that the services "don't speak the same language" is a telling statement.  Rather than suggest that each service has its own view of the world - its own ontology - the fundamental difference is attributed to language.  This brings us back to the idea of the primacy of language over conception, and Wittgenstein's notion that language is the mirror of reality.  I believe these views are invalid, and that we need to "make our ideas clear" as Peirce said, and that language can as easily trick us as inform us. 

Perhaps the lesson for an analyst is not to be surprised when the same term is used to mean different things in the same enterprise.  Indeed, the analyst should be on guard for it when technical or unusual terms are used.  Homonyms can also indicate the existence of different concept systems, or ontologies.

The Fallacy of Language As The Mirror of Reality

Analysts can sometimes create huge problems if they try to produce single definitions for terms within a single semantic community and within a single  universe of discourse.  This may sound crazy, so let me start by giving an example.

Not long ago I was in a discussion concerning data quality.  The group leaders decided there was a need to discuss the so-called "dimensions of data quality", e.g. Accuracy, Consistency, Timeliness, and so on.  We started with Consistency.  Each individual in the group offered their view of what Data Consistency was.  Several different definitions were offered.  Eventually, the group took a vote and decided which definition of Data Consistency they preferred.  The alternative definitions were not discussed further, nor recorded.  The individuals who had proposed the unaccepted definitions felt slighted, perhaps even hurt.  And they had a right to - as far as I could tell, the alternative definitions represented valid concepts.

What a broken process!  Definitions of valid concepts were simply rejected, and lost.  Individuals were turned off from definitional work, maybe permanently. Why did it happen?  I think I can offer a hypothesis.

The first mistake is to believe in that every concept that is known of is represented by a term in language.  Unknown concepts will obviously not be so represented.  But what is "unknown" in a semantic community?  Is it any concept not known by everyone in the community?  What about a concept only understood by a minority in the community?

Secondly, in technical language, there seems to be more expected of technical terms than is warranted.  They sound  "scientific".  They sound as if we should expect them to convey something precise - a trick taken advantage of by thousands of misleading advertisements every day.  But there is no reason to expect a technical term to have an agreed definition by everyone in a semantic community.  There may be several valid concepts competing to be signified by the term. 

The expectation - in technical areas - that terms mirror known reality should not be relied on.  The phrase "language as a mirror of reality" is connected with Wittgenstein (see http://www.percepp.com/lacus.htm).  It should be granted he may not have been talking about terms per se, and granted that probably few analysts are conciously influenced by Wittgenstein.  However, the presupposition seems to have got about somehow, and, anyway academics show little interest in how analysts go about their daily work.

Language cannot be assumed to mirror reality in technical areas.  Analysts must create governance processes that guide their definitional work so they harvest all valid concepts, and encourage members of semantic communities to contribute.  Terms are starting points, not a final list of signs that denote all the individual concepts in a universe of discourse.