No; they all have meaning beyond what people “assign”. There’s a reason why the Bible says “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. 18:21)—civilizations have risen and fallen on mere words.
Sorry, I disagree. The concepts for which words stand do indeed have such power, but not the words themselves, which are mutable in the extreme.
200 and some years ago the world changed when T. Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal.”
But it was not the words themselves that changed the world, it was the ideas behind them, as can be seen by the fact that these words could be, and have been, translated into just about every language on earth.
I presume you will agree with me that “marriage” does not mean to the average 20 year old what it means to you and me. As with all words, “marriage” carries a huge freight of allusions and connotations and implications with it. And for “marriage” those are most definitely in the process of changing.
You might not like it, and I know I don’t. But 20 or 50 years from now it is likely the term will mean to very few people what it does to you and I today.
I think that is very sad, but I also think it is a (probable) fact.
Just reread my previous post to you and realized it was a good deal most positive than I had intended.
In practical terms there is a great deal of overlap between symbols, such as words, and their referents.
What I was trying to say was not that your post was wrong, which is how I think I came across, but rather that it’s not as simple as that.
The term “marriage,” for instance, describes an astonishing variety of human customs across the planet and across thousands of years of history. What it means to you or to me is not what it meant to King Solomon or Genghis Khan, or Henry VIII for that matter.
Our own personal perspective is not necessarily that of the universe.