In the reading I found the definitions section very useful and helpful. It is often very frustrating when people misunderstand each other in their conversations. In Chapter 2, we read that we can replace vague or ambiguous sentences to make them clearer. Another way is to use a definition to help explain a specific word or phrase so that the other person does not misinterpret what we are trying to say. A definition does not always mean what it says in the dictionary. We can make our own definitions to help further explain. For example, we can use a synonym for a word as the definition or we can just further describe the word.
An example of a synonym:
If you were to use the word evading in a conversation and the other person did not know what that meant you could tell them it means the same as escaping.
An example of a description:
The word misinterpret could be described as: something that is not understood or maybe understood in the wrong way.
Hi Blog Student!!
ReplyDeleteI can definitely agree with you that it is very frustrating when people misunderstand each other. You try and explain something to someone and they completely misunderstand what you said to them. So the definition section of our Critical Thinking textbook is extremely helpful, because most problems that can occur usually can begin with misunderstandings and I think people should ask each other to clear something up that way we won’t misunderstand what we’ve been told. The two methods stated in the book are extremely helpful too, the first is replacing the sentence with something that isn’t vague, and the second method is using a definition to make a word precise. These two methods can help make what we are saying to each other is clearly stated and not confusing or misunderstanding.