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"Words have power.
The wrong words can have
devastating results."
- Eric H. Potruch
"People regard the dictionary as this
sacred book in which they have 100%
faith.
They don't even
think of a human
agency behind it."
- Michael Agnes, editor-in-chief of Webster's New
World College Dictionary
News
Rumor
A
promise
A brief statement
A
term; a vocable
The divine
Word of God.
Verbal contention; dispute.
A
constituent part of a sentence.
Talk; discourse; speech;
language.
Signal; order; command; direction.
An
exchange of
views on some topic.
The text of a
vocal composition; lyrics.
An assurance or promise; sworn intention.
The spoken
sign of a conception or an
idea.
A verbal signal; a password or
watchword.
The sacred writings of the
Christian religion.
Hostile or angry
remarks made back and forth.
Something said; an utterance, remark, or
comment.
New information about
specific and timely events.
A unit of
language that native speakers can
identify.
To use words, as in
discussion; to argue; to dispute.
A single component part of
human speech or language.
Account; tidings;
message; communication;
information.
A set of bits
constituting the smallest unit of addressable memory.
A brief remark or
observation; an
expression; a phrase, clause, or
short sentence.
The written or
printed character, or
combination of characters; symbolic expression of an object or
concept.
Language considered as implying the
faith or authority of the
individual who utters it;
statement; affirmation; declaration;
promise.
An articulate or vocal
sound, or a combination of articulate and vocal
sounds, uttered by the human voice, and by
custom expressing an idea or ideas.
Used
euphemistically in combination with the initial letter of a term that is considered offensive or taboo or that one does not want to utter.
A sound or a combination of
sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, that
symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of
a single morpheme or of a combination of morphemes.
A
fundamental unit of storage in a
computer. The size of a word in a
particular computer architecture is one of
its chief distinguishing characteristics. The size of a
word is usually the same as the width
of the computer's data bus so it is possible
to read or write a
word in a single
operation. An instruction is usually one or more
words long and a
word can be used to hold a
whole number of characters. These
days, this nearly always means a whole number of bytes (eight bits),
most often 32 or 64 bits. In the past when six bit character sets were used, a
word might be a multiple of six bits,
e.g. 24 bits (four characters) in the ICL 1900 series.
"In the
beginning was the word, and while
the truth of this
biblical epigram remains a matter
of faith, we all accept as axiomatic
Shakespeare's observation that "a rose by any other name would
smell as sweet."
Words are more than descriptive; they
are also prescriptive. Indeed, we all know from
experience the power
that words have to
influence thinking and
behavior." - Ben Miles
"Creativity is a matter
of illusion. We take raw materials (ink,
paper, memory, perspective) and fashion something that, no
matter how faithful to our experience, is a
contrivance, an invention, an elaborate
shadow play. That's the
miracle - that we can
believe it at all, that these tools, imperfect as
they are, can stir us into trusting something
that is, on the most basic level, not actually there." - David L. Ulin
"Words
realize nothing, verify nothing to you, unless you have
suffered in your own person the
thing which the
words try to describe. A
powerful agent is the right
word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain; a close
approximation to it will answer, and much traveling is done in a well-enough
fashion by its help, but we do not welcome it and applaud it and rejoice in it
as we do when the right one blazes out on us. Whenever we come upon one of
those intensely right words in a
book or a
newspaper the resulting effect is
physical as well as spiritual, and electrically
prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and
tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry."
-Mark Twain
"I always believed as a
speechwriter that if you could persuade
George W. Bush to commit himself
to certain words, he would
feel himself committed to the
ideas that underlay those
words. And the big shock to me has
been that although George W. Bush
said the words, he just did not absorb
the ideas." - David Frum,
George W. Bush's
speechwriter
"Speech is civilization itself. The
word, even the most
contradictory
word, preserves contact - it is
silence which isolates." -
Thomas Mann
Language is
always in a state of flux.The only
way humans can communicate concepts
that have no temporality is through symbols.
Common usage of
words shows the ability of adapting a
word to a new concept.
If the
word is commonly used in a
way different from how it had
previously
been used then the new concept
becomes a definition of the
word.
A
reader or listener may not have the
same conceptual image as
the writer or speaker intended.
Corruption
of conceptual images occurs
in two vital links.
The first link is from the mind of the writer or speaker to the
expression of the
conceptual image. The
writer or speaker can not perfectly reconstruct the
conceptual image as he or
she must symbolize the conceptual image by
verbalization or by written symbology in
words.
The second link is from
the senses of the listener or reader, his or her
eyes and ears,
to his or her mind which must
hear or see the
word symbols
and then attempt to reconstruct the conceptual
image in his or her mind
as originally conceived.
Two individuals
communicating through
words, written or spoken, that come
from the same culture and social group will necessarily understand one
another better than those that come
from a different culture or social group. Even within the same
culture and social groups
those with different experience sets such as age,
place of birth, social classification,
work experience
and hobbies will necessarily experience
corruption of the original conceptual image.
This
corruption is inevitable.
Words definitions may be corrupted or interchanged
by some speakers or
writers with the intent to deceive as in
propaganda.
"The slovenliness of our language makes
it easier for us to have foolish
thoughts.
Words like
objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote,
constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress
up a simple statement and give an air of
scientific impartiality to
biased judgements.
Adjectives like
epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable,
inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international
politics.
Writing that aims at
glorifying war usually takes on an archaic
color, its characteristic words being:
realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner,
jackboot, clarion.
Foreign
words and
expressions such as cul de
sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina,
mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung,
weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance.
Bad writers, and
especially scientific,
political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the
notion that Latin or Greek words are
grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict,
extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others
constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.
Meaningless
words abound.
It is normal to
come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. The
word
fascism has now no meaning except in so
far as it signifies "something not desirable." The
words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each
of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.
It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are
praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it
is a democracy.
Words of this kind are often used in a
consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own
private definition, but
allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like
Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest on
Earth, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution,
are almost always made with intent to deceive.
Other
words used in variable meanings, in
most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian,
science, progressive, reactionary,
bourgeois, equality.
Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a
lifeless, imitative style.
The great
enemy of clear language is insincerity.
When there is a gap between
one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long
words and exhausted idioms, like a
cuttlefish spurting out ink.
In our age there is
no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All
issues are political issues, and
politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly,
hatred, and schizophrenia. One ought to recognize that the present
political chaos is connected with the decay of
language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at
the verbal end.
Political language - and
with variations this is true of all
political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists
- is designed to make lies sound truthful and
murder
respectable, and to give an
appearance of solidity to pure wind. One
cannot change this all in a moment, but one can
at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one
jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase - some jackboot,
Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other
lump of verbal refuse - into the dustbin, where it belongs." -
George Orwell
logos
"As the Sufi Junnaiyd of the madressa said, the
word of God came down to man as rain to soil, and the result was mud, not clear
water." - Kim Stanley RobinsonThe word "logos" in
Greek has an extraordinary range of meanings.
Logos means much more than "word."
In the 300s BC, the
time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, logos described the faculty of human
reason, the knowledge men possessed of the material
world and an understanding of the way in
which the substrate of the universe manifests itself in and as individual
objects.
Logos develops a connotative sense of a deepened
understanding of
reality giving man the ability to recognize
reality for what reality
is and to understand the
rational principle that governs all things.
The Jewish philosophers Philo of Alexandria saw logos as "wisdom personified," as God's creative principle,
the principle of coherence
undergirding the universe.
Logos, for Jesus, refers to divine
logic/reason of God. This definition is Hellenized Judaism's adaptation of the
classical Greek concept of logos as the
will of God.
"Listening not to me but to the logos it is wise to agree that all are
one." - Heraclitus
hermeneuticsHermeneutics may be
described as the development and study of theories of the interpretation and
understanding of texts.
In contemporary usage in religious studies,
hermeneutics refers to the study of the interpretation of religious texts.
Hermeneutics is more broadly used in contemporary philosophy to denote
the study of theories and methods of the interpretation of all texts and
systems of meaning. The concept of "text" is here extended beyond written
documents to any number of objects subject to interpretation, such as
experiences.
A hermeneutic is defined as a specific system or method
for interpretation, or a specific theory of interpretation.
Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to
understand things from somebody else's point of view, and to appreciate the
cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook.
Hermeneutics is the process of applying this understanding to
interpreting the meaning of written texts and symbolic artifacts (such as art
or sculpture or architecture), which may be either historic or contemporary.
The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text
hermeneutically.
The hermeneutic circle refers to the idea that one's
understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the
individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference
to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood
without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. However, this
circular character of interpretation does not make it impossible to interpret a
text; rather, it stresses that the meaning of a text must be found within its
cultural, historical, and literary context.
A common use of the word
hermeneutics refers to a process of scriptural interpretation.
Throughout religious history scholars and students of religious texts
have sought to mine the wealth of their meanings by developing a variety of
different systems of hermeneutics.
Philosophical hermeneutics in
particular can be seen as a development of scriptural hermeneutics, providing a
theoretical backing for various interpretive projects. Thus, philosophical and
scriptural hermeneutics can be seen as mutually reinforcing practices.
Hermeneutics in the Western world, as a general science of text interpretation,
can be traced back to two sources.
One source was the ancient Greek
rhetoricians' study of literature, which came to fruition in Alexandria.
The other source has been the Midrashic and Patristic traditions of
Biblical exegesis, which were contemporary with Hellenistic culture. Scholars
in antiquity expected a text to be coherent, consistent in grammar, style and
outlook, and they amended obscure or "decadent" readings to comply with their
codified rules. By extending the perception of inherent logic of texts, Greeks
were able to attribute works with uncertain origin.
Exegesis (from the
Greek - 'to lead out') involves an extensive and critical interpretation of an
authoritative text, especially of a holy scripture, such as of the Old and New
Testaments of the Bible, the Talmud, the Midrash, the Qur'an, etc. In
Christianity revealed exegesis considers that the Holy Ghost inspired the
authors of the scriptural texts, and so the words of those texts convey a
divine revelation.
Exegesis also is used to describe the elucidation of
philosophical and legal texts.
Exegesis is synonymous with
hermeneutics.
Hermeneutic passions are the
desires to know another and be known by them
- to create fellowship. By
empathetically entering into a text -
in a living interpretation of a text
- the reader both appreciates the text as
written and relates the text to his/her own personal experiences.
See thought
image
See Rudyard
Kipling
See Aldous Leonard
Huxley
See Natural Law or the Law
of God |
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