RESULTADOS Y DISCUSIÓN

The meaning of symbols is also shaped by who uses them. The condensational meaning a symbol captures what that symbol is associated with, which includes who is using it. The condensational meaning of a symbol is very similar to the connotative meaning of a word. While words have literal definitions (called their denotations), their meaning goes well beyond what exists in dictionaries. The connotative meaning of a word is the set of

associations that it evokes in a listener that are not part of its literal definition. Often, the connotative feeling a word evokes is largely a function of who has used the term in recent memory. Certain words become characteristic of how particular social or political groups communicate, and thereby become symbols of those groups. This is part of how symbols can serve as markers of identity that distinguish between social groups.

Take the word “liberal” as an example. As a set of sounds and characters, the word has no inherent meaning. However, the term has been a central symbol in the organization of political competition for centuries, serving as a call to arms for proponents and opponents alike. Moreover, the meaning of the term has changed radically as it has come to summa- rize very different sets of symbolic relationships and very different political perspectives than it once did. At the outset, a liberal was someone who opposed the role of religion in politics and who viewed individual liberty as the proper foundation of the social order. Using the term liberal referenced the ideas of Bentham, Locke, and Mill and the broader political movement that sought to demolish religious and feudal hierarchies as the anchors of political life. The word liberal was a code word for rational humanism, for a faith in the powers of the individual, and a rejection of permanent social hierarchy. Later, once the industrial revolution matured, and as old authorities lost out to capitalist interests, the term liberal was increasingly claimed by proponents of free-market ideology. As the church and aristocracy ceased to be their main antagonists, liberals became primarily focused on the economic realm and keeping government out of market affairs. While the intellectual structure of classic liberals was not abandoned, the broader philosophical enterprise receded into the background and economic liberty became the central focus. Of course, today’s liberal looks nothing like the liberal of the 19th century. The term “liberal” is now taken to summarize a worldview that sees the market, not government, as the chief threat to liberty. For liberals, individual liberty must be protected by the government, notfrom the government. The word “liberal” is now attached to a belief in interdependence as the fundamental human condition, with a focus on the failures of free market capitalism and a concern for what individuals owe each other.

Without going into extensive depth about how these transformations of meaning oc- curred, this historical narrative underscores how the meaning of words is contingent upon how they are used, and by whom. The meaning of the symbol “liberal” has shifted, in part, because it has been adopted by different actors over time to describe their under- standing of the social world. Over the past thirty years, “liberal” has increasingly become a pejorative term. Where liberals once proudly claimed the mantle, it has become a term of abuse, an epithet, the “l-word.” To a large extent, this shift in meaning resulted from a change in who uses the term. As the symbol “liberal” was increasingly used by conser- vatives to attack liberals, more than by liberals to describe themselves, it has taken on a new set of associations. Today liberals are most apt to call themselves “progressives” because the old symbol now carries negative connotative meaning.

I maintain that people are quite adept at recognizing when someone emphasizes the same symbols that they do. Even if subconsciously, we are able to discern when someone is speaking about the world in the way we would. The reactions someone’s language evokes, whether consciously recognized or felt emotionally, registers our subtle understanding of whether their cognitive map of the world matches our own. Shared understanding implies shared experience, not perfectly, but reliably. If someone associates symbols as we do, chooses the same words, and puts these linguistic symbols together in the same way we would, they have probably moved in the same communicative circles and had many of the same experiences that we have. Regional dialects are an easy example of how the words we use tell a story about who we are. The same idea will be communicated in different ways depending on whom you are speaking to and where. Given that most of our language processing is unconscious, and given that we must recognize and employ a host of rules and associations to communicate, it would be surprising if our cognitive processes were not registering a great deal of information unconsciously about whether the person we are interacting with shares our symbolic understanding of reality.