Dictionary Definitions Used as a Rhetorical[1] Weapons
Dictionary definitions for conceptual categories can be used to fundamentally distort our understanding of meaning.
How many times recently have we heard people challenging others to “define woman?” They want to reduce it down to an essence, a necessary and sufficient feature, because if it can be said a “woman” has to have feature X, then a trans woman who may not have feature X is now not a woman. So it becomes a tool to structure power and values.
The same things happen people sit down to talk about gods in the Bible. They wanted to define not only the concept of “deity,” but all of the salient characteristics as well. But you can’t define “deity” because once you begin, you’re introducing that reduction distortion of trying to limit it to some kind of list of necessary and sufficient features. To control its “correct” use and interpretation.
When we rely on definitions as the final authority of meaning, and when we try to reduce things down to a list of necessary and sufficient features, not only are we distorting the categories, we’re frequently not honoring the use of these categories the way the authors were using them.
And that is often because overwhelmingly, people seek to define things in ways that serve their own interests.
That’s one of the problems with how dictionaries are used in modern culture – they’re supposed to be following after usage and simply reporting on usage, saying, “this is how people are using it.” But those who are seeking a rhetorical advantage reverse that order and misuse dictionaries to say, “this is the only way you’re allowed to use it, and if you use it another way, you are wrong.”
Dictionaries do not adjudicate meaning, they report on usage. But they do so using a fundamentally distorting framework; this idea that all things are reducible to necessary and sufficient features in order to be correct, as opposed to simply being regarded as a starting point for common understanding of current, most common usage.
This need for reductionism is a hallmark of what is often referred to as “conservative” thinking, in order to lessen the thought-load required to parse nuance. If you have a ready-made definition for “God” or “woman,” you don’t have to consider anyone’s opinions, personal experience, or perspective. It enables you to summarily dismiss anyone’s thinking or belief that doesn’t agree with your own, buttressed by an “authority,” whether that is a bible or a dictionary.
This is also a logical fallacy commonly known as an “appeal to authority”[2] or “argument from authority.”
[1] Rhetorical: of, relating to, or concerned with the art of speaking or writing formally and effectively especially as a way to persuade or influence people. [Britannica Dictionary]
[2] The appeal to authority fallacy is a type of informal fallacy that occurs when someone uses the authority, reputation, or expertise of a person or a source as the sole or primary reason to support their argument, without providing any other evidence or reasoning.