by

Paul Chippendale, Karynne Courts, Jackie Le Fevre, Rona Lynn Fitzpatrick, Michael Henderson, Shar Henderson, Dougal Thompson, Gunther Weil

Over the past 30 years, the 125 Value Descriptors, as originally defined by Brian Hall's team have been re-defined several times to keep them relevant to the language and culture of the time. The original descriptors were defined and tested primarily in a religious/theological context. Subsequent re-workings of the descriptors have addressed the need to use language more relevant to society in general. In addition, language changes with use over time and what is considered "transitory" or "simplistic" is often, as in the case of beauty, in the eyes of the beholder (check out The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way).

The team who have co-written this eZine are currently engaged in the latest Value Descriptor redefinition project, with a target completion date of 1 June 2008.

As part of this project, we've had a significant amount of dialogue in order to clarify our intent. This dialogue included consideration of the impact of descriptor changes on the AVI. It is our understanding that the purpose of the AVI is as a tool to indicate where people's priorities lie, and, that additional conversation about the meaning of the descriptors is where the true value lies - this emphasizes the importance of follow up.

Another outcome of this dialogue was the considered need to use descriptors rather than definitions and to simplify some of the descriptors. The impact of this will be to expand the possible interpretations also broaden their application. We believe it is important to emphasize that it really does not matter what the author or consultant believes the values to mean, rather how does the client find this value relevant in their life. For example with the value, Being Liked: being liked by others covers everyone including peers. Someone who believes it is important to be liked will still choose this value despite leaving out the narrow interpretation of "experiencing friendly feelings by your peers". The question that may come up about someone who chooses this value is, "How does this value affect my decision choices?" The vagueness allows someone to consider if their need to be liked affects all or only some of their relationships and in what way. We believe it to be a mistake to consider that "depth of meaning" comes from the actual words used to describe a value, rather than from the conversation that occurs in sharing the meaning. The latter is more inclusive of the person participating in the values discovery process.

In summary, we believe that arriving at shorter, clearer descriptors, will ultimately give individuals more room to explicate how that value, and what it means to them, is lived or not lived in their own lives.

The Academic View: LANGUAGE AND CONVENTION

We were also interested in what academic experts in language have to say about language and its imbedded meaning. The extract below from Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic (Fongelin. R. & Sinnott-Armstrong. W. 2005, Thompson, Wadsworth, pp. 4-5) gives a good overview of the academic position:

As everyone who has bothered to think about it knows, language is conventional. There seems to be no reason why we, as English speakers, use the word "dog" to refer to a dog rather than to a cat, a tree, or anything else. It seems that any word might have been used to stand for anything. Beyond this, there seems to be no reason why we put words together the way we do. In English, we put adjectives before the nouns they modify. We thus speak of a "green salad". In French, adjectives usually follow the noun, and so instead of saying "verte salade", the French say "salade verte". The conventions of our own language are so much with us that it strikes us as odd when we discover that other languages have different conventions. A French diplomat once praised his own language because, as he said, it followed the natural order of thought. This strikes English speakers as silly, but in seeing why it is silly, we see that the word order in our own language is conventional as well.
     Although it is important to realize that our language is conventional, it is also important not to misunderstand this fact and draw false conclusions from it. From the idea that language is conventional, it is easy to conclude that language is totally arbitrary. If language is totally arbitrary, then it might seem that it really does not matter which words we use or how we put them together. It takes only a little thought to see that this view, however daring it might seem, misrepresents the role of conventions in language. If we wish to communicate with others, we must follow the system of conventions that others use. Communication can only take place from within a shared system of conventions. Conventions do not destroy meaning by making it arbitrary; conventions bring meaning into existence.
     A misunderstanding of the conventional nature of language can lead to pointless disputes. Sometimes, in the middle of a discussion, someone will declare that "the whole thing is just a matter of definition" or "what you say is true by your definition, false by mine." There are times when definitions are important and the truth of what is said turns on them, but usually this is not the case. Suppose someone has fallen off a cliff and is heading toward certain death on the rocks below. Of course, it is a matter of convention that we use the word "death" to describe the result of the sudden, sharp stop at the end of the fall. We might have used some other word-perhaps "birth"-instead. But it certainly will not help a person who is falling to his certain death to shout out, "By 'birth' I mean death." It will not help even if everyone agrees to use these words in this new way. If we all decided to adopt this "birth" instead of "He is falling from the cliff to his certain death." But speaking in this way will not change the facts. It will not save him from perishing. It will not make those who care for him feel better.
     The upshot of this simple example is that the truth of what we say is rarely just a matter of definition. Whether what we have said is true or not will depend, for the most part, on how things stand in the world. For example, if Germans wish to say that snow is black, they will use the words, "Der Schnee ist schwartz." Other Germans will understand these words, but unless snow is different in Germany than everywhere else, they will also think that what is being said is false. In general, then, though the meaning of what we say is dependent on convention, the truth of what we say is not.
     In the last sentence we used the qualifying phrase, "in general". To say that a claim holds in general indicates that there may be exceptions. This qualification is needed because sometimes the truth of what we say is simply a matter of definition. Take a simple example: The claim that a triangle has three sides is true by definition, because a triangle is defined as "a closed figure having three sides". Again, if someone says that sin is wrong, he or she has said something that is true by definition, for a sin is defined as, among other things, "something that is wrong".
     In sum, people are able to communicate with each other because they share certain linguistic conventions. These conventions could have been different, and in this sense they are arbitrary. But it does not follow from this that the truth of what we say is always just a matter of convention. Sometimes things are true just as a matter of convention; however, in general, the truth of what we say is settled not by definition but by looking at the facts.

Value Definitions or Descriptors -- Which Should We Use?

When we started this exercise we were intent on providing revised definitions for some of the values. After observing the flow of our dialogue we came to the conclusion that we would be better using descriptors for the values.

What's the difference? WordNet to the rescue:

• definition -- a concise explanation of the meaning of a word or phrase or symbol
• descriptor -- the phonological or orthographic sound or appearance of a word that can be used to describe or identify something

The following saying sums up the problem with definitions, "The Tao expressed is not the Tao." In other words, by the very nature of trying to write a definition for value we are constraining the value to less than it is or can be.

So, taking the lead from the definition of a descriptor, our objective is to provide sufficient information about each value so that a person can easily identify it -- i.e. distinguish one value from other values.

An alternate definition of descriptor, from WordNet, is: "a piece of stored information that is used to identify an item in an information storage and retrieval system". Thus a value descriptor is a piece of information that is used to identify a particular value.

So our values re-definition project is not about providing precise definitions for each value, rather, it's about providing a sufficiently detailed descriptor for each value such that people have no difficulty distinguishing one value from another.

Criteria for evaluating the efficacy of value descriptors

Here we define a set of criteria for evaluating the efficacy (capacity or power to produce a desired effect) of the value descriptors.

Firstly, to create efficaciousness value descriptors we should:

1. Identify values which have like roles and work with the identified set of values. (For example, control/order/discipline, law/duty, law/guide, accountability/ethics, etc. all have an ordering role within their respective world-view -- each world-view has different beliefs about how the ordering should be effected, therefore, each world-view has a different value giving expression to the beliefs.) In working with the new descriptors for a set of values, we must ensure the role for each value within its world-view is maintained, and each descriptor clearly distinguishes each value in the set from the others.
2. Keep the value label and its descriptor simple using more common-usage words.
3. Use word senses which are the most common interpretation of the word.
4. Ensure the descriptor of a value makes it simple to distinguish it from other values, particularly from other values which have labels of like-senses such as, for example: Cooperation/Complementarity, Collaboration/Subsidiarity, and Interdependence.
5. Not use other value labels within the descriptor.
6. Not provide examples of how the value may be lived -- this narrows the descriptor and could bias its meaning.
7. Ensure it facilitates the process of people working through the VAK questions to identify how they are living the value in their life.

Thus the criteria for evaluating the efficacy of a value descriptor becomes:

• Is it simple?
• Is it constructed from common-usage words?
• Does it use words such that their most common meaning-sense is the sense intended?
• Does it faithfully describe its role in the world-view to which it belongs as a focus value - i.e. is it congruent with the beliefs of its world-view?
• Is it sufficiently different from other descriptors of values whose labels have like-senses?
• Is it free of other value labels?
• Is it free of examples of how to live the value?
• Is it easily used with the VAK questions?

In IT jargon, a descriptor which meets a set of desired criteria, is be said to be well formed.

Where we are at?

We have currently completed 25 of the 128 values. You can view some of the discussion and activity in relation to this project at: http://definingvalues.blogspot.com/ -- apart from the blog, much of the project dialogue has transpired over Skype. This latter dialogue has not been recorded, however, at the completion of the project, we will make available a white-paper which will document, for each value, its original definition through to its latest descriptor.