Words are themselves "images". The sound of the word, or perhaps its shape on paper reminding you of its sound, is only an image -- that is, a sense experience.
Sense experience is all we know. To make "sense" of it all, we impose structure. Certain images seem similar; we group them. Sets of associated images... classes, or ideas if you will. We seem to be born with this innate sense of "association". Or at least for me. I can only think about how others think via some kind of projection and by assuming some complicated array of associations built upon frameworks upon frameworks of ideas.
A "word" is just another class: the way I said it once, the way your mother said it that one time, the visual image reaction in my mind when I hear it. The utterance of that word is but one image that reminds us of these other things: "representing the broader idea", if you will.
So a word is part of an idea, at least within this framework. But words are special for most in that they are somehow "canonical" -- most people think of language as something separate -- the medium for which to transfer ideas.
That's fine. We still have the fact that words associate to ideas.
But of course, words are also noisy and ambiguous. Describing an experience using words -- we often fool ourselves.
The purest form of the idea is simply the idea itself. But the human memory is... well, it works the way it works. And the mind likes to make associations, build structure.
By verbalizing an idea, you run the risk of associating the event, the experience, with those words. Those words, in turn, may be associated to a much larger set of experiences and ideas.
And thus, by metaphor, the particular experience may become associated to this larger set. Perhaps things become what they aren't. Or perhaps not.
Correctness can only be judged within another framework. But it happens to be that using words can lead us to "incorrectness" -- we see things that aren't there, we judge when we shouldn't. It gets worse when others are involved, and you give them those words. But that's a whole separate problem.
It's probably best to be mindful. What is there is all that is there. Labeling actions, people, events... sometimes makes it seem worse than it actually is.
