anti-semantic

The following blog reflects the fact that im working on a journal for class at the moment and have ridiculous thought flowing about everything, particularly things that have nothing to do with pastoral theology (the subject im doing). anyways, the thoughts i reflect here seem to paint the instiution i study at in a poor light, but thats not fair, i love my college, ive just been there too long and get frustrated. anyways, onto the blog...
anti-semantic
no, you didn’t read that wrong, I have decided that im now officially anti-semantic. I’ve had enuff, I’m just totally over it.

I feel like we have been encouraged to argue semantics. If someone uses a word in a popular way lets just say ‘liturgy’ for example, we need to correct them first in what they are saying, or alternatively, not correct them and just blow them out of the water totally, with a big fat “your wrong, you idiot!”

So, here’s my example.
Liturgy.
To the theologian, the student and possibly the pastor is basically all the elements of a service. So one liturgy may be formal, lots of reading/responding etc. Another may be somewhat spontaneous, with various emotional displays, and then we have everything in between, from hymns to Eucharist to whatever.
But…
To most people (or lots i know anyways). Liturgy is what they do in high churches – read here Roman Catholic, some Anglican, Orthodox, some Uniting, some Lutheran etc. It’s the formal stuff I mentioned before.

So… what do we do with that?
Instead of just going, cool… we are using the same word and meaning different things (obviously). We either slam people and make them feel like idiots, or tell people they have a poor vocabulary and make them feel stupid.
Does it really matter? As long as we clarify, by liturgy I mean this… oh, when you say liturgical you mean that… oh ok…

I know the other day in class I asked about mysticism, and well, I was meaning Christian mystics, not full blown mystics. Arghhh… maybe that was just my poor understanding of the English language coming thru…

It just bugs me.
I imagine that I am arguing for a total breakdown of human language as we know it, where one day no-one will understand anyone else (like trying to speak Welsh with an English understanding of phonetics).

Does anyone else get this? Or is that just a more obvious sign of my ever growing slide towards insanity? Or, possibly both…