But a warning before I start. Using words to explain the nature of words is extremely difficult, if not impossible. However, I'll do the best I can. 

We'll start with the cornerstone of language: Words are symbols. Therefore, every word's only reason for being is to represent something. And that something is its referent. 

Now a referent is something you experience. And an experience is what takes place when something stimulates your nervous system. 

That stimulus can exist either outside your mind — for example, trees, mountains, the sky, people, and so on — or inside your mind, either in the form of a feeling — such as fear, love, hatred, bewilderment, disappointment, etc. — or in the form of a reasoned response to information — such as an intention or a conclusion. 

There are many, many words in common usage, each of whose referent cannot be experienced, either outside your mind or within it. Which means they can have no meaning. For you or for anyone else. Such words are verbal ghosts. 

Let me identify for you a number of them: lifestyle; role model; intellectual; Germany; the State Department; the federal government; communism; multiculturalism; the poor, the rich, and the homeless; corporate America; purchasing power; and so forth. 

The danger of allowing yourself to be hooked by verbal ghosts lies in the certainty that you will do something that is against your better interests. 

Perhaps this is what lies behind Allen Ginsburg's remarkable observation: “Whoever controls the language, the images, controls the race.” 

Think about it.