“Onomatopoeia (noun): The forming of or use of a word that imitates in sound what it denotes; use of imitative or echoic words; echoic word. Adjective: onomatopoeic, onomatopoeical, onomatopoetic, onomatopoeian; adverb: onomatopoeically, onomatopoetically; noun: onomatope, onomatopy.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Tautology: The use of words to repeat (unnecessarily) the same statement or meaning. For example, the statement that ‘Britain is an island and surrounded by water’ is a tautology, since islands are by definition so described. Tautological explanations are similarly true by definition, or circular, and therefore unfalsifiable. Sociological explanations which located the origins of social institutions in their effects tend to take this form. Thus, for example, some early functionalist anthropologists (including Bronislaw Malinowski) were prone to argue that, because certain (exotic) social practices (such as witchcraft) existed, then they must have a social function—and one that could assume they had that function precisely because the practices themselves existed.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
“Defective: Indicating a lack of customary grammatical (or inflectional) form or forms, or used in only one form, e.g., ‘quoth,’ ‘wend,’ ‘behooves.’”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Voluntarism: A term usually contrasted with determinism, voluntarism denotes the assumption that individuals are the agents of their actions, and have some control over what they do. Voluntarism’s alliance with action contrasts with the deterministic emphasis associated with structure. By accepting human unpredictability, voluntarism renders sociological analysis more difficult, though arguable more interesting. Voluntaristic theories place issues of decision, purpose, and choice at the forefront of sociological analysis. In The Structure of Social Action (1937), Talcott Parsons develops a voluntaristic theory of action, so called because it includes normative elements, subjective categories, choices about means and ends, and effort.
Voluntarism in social science raises the philosophical issue of free will: namely, the belief that choice means freedom, in the sense of individuals being free to will what they will. Most sociologists—even those of a voluntaristic persuasion—recognize that individuals can only do otherwise than they do within limits (perhaps of a cultural or psychological kind). That is, a residual determinism is implied, even though social action is typically not reduced to physical and biological variables.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
“Declarative: Constituting a statement or assertion that may be either true or false, e.g., ‘Language must continually change.’”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“auditory perception: The ability to process and make sense of information that is received as sound. Involving recognition and interpretation, rather than hearing itself, auditory perception is related to the ways in which the brain recognizes and discriminates sounds in order to make sense of them.
Problems with auditory perception are frequently associated with language disorders and may have significant effect on an individual’s language development in areas such as reading, expressive language, and receptive vocabulary. These problems are a major factor in language learning disabilities.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Correlative: Indicating combined or reciprocal function but not adjacency in the sentence, e.g., the conjunctions ‘not only’ and ‘but,’ ‘neither’ and ‘nor,’ the phrases ‘on the one hand’ and ‘on the other hand.’”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Verification: In empiricist philosophy, knowledge-claims are accepted as scientific only if they are verifiable. To verify a statement is to provide evidence, generally of and empirical or observational kind, for believing it to be true. In logical empiricism the meaning of a statement was treated as equivalent to its method of verification, and only verifiable statements were accepted as meaningful. In non-empiricist philosophies of science, and in less extreme forms of empiricism, it is accepted that evidence may give good reasons for believing in the truth of a statement, whilst falling short in the sense of conclusive proof.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion, professional development, term of art
“Archetype: (Greek “original pattern) A basic model from which copies are made; therefore a prototype. In general terms, the abstract idea of a class of things which represents the most typical and essential characteristics shared by the class; thus a paradigm of exemplar. An archetype is atavistic and universal, the product of “the collective unconscious” and inherited from our ancestors. The fundamental facts of human existence are archetypal: birth, growing up, love, family and tribal life, dying, death, not to mention the struggle between children and parents, and fraternal rivalry. Certain character or personality types have become established as more or less archetypal. For instance, the rebel, the Don Juan (womanizer), the all-conquering hero, the braggadocio, the country bumpkin, the local lad who makes good, the self-made man, the hunted man, the siren, the witch and femme fatale, the villain, the traitor, the snob and the social climber, the guild-ridden figure in search of expiation, the damsel in distress, and the person more sinned against than sinning. Creatures, also, have come to be archetypal emblems. For example, the lion, the eagle, the snake, the hare and the tortoise. Further archetypes are the rose, the paradisiacal garden and the state of “pre-Fall” innocence. Themes include the arduous quest of search, the pursuit of vengeance, the overcoming of difficult tasks, the descent into the underworld, symbolic fertility rites and redemptive rituals.
The archetypal idea has always been present and diffused in human consciousness. Plato was the first philosopher to elaborate the concept of archetypal or ideal forms (Beauty, Truth, Goodness) and divine archetypes. Since the turn of the 19th century the idea and the subject have been explored extensively. Practitioners of the two sciences of comparative anthropology and depth psychology have made notable contributions. The major works in this venture of discovery include: J.G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890-1915); C.G. Jung’s “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetic Art” (1922) in Contributions to Analytical Psychology (1928) and ‘Psychology and Literature’ in Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933); Sigmund Freud’s A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1920); Maud Bodkin’s Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (1934); G. Wilson Knight’s Starlit Dance (1941); Ernst Cassirer’s Language and Myth (translated 1946); Robert Graves’s The White Goddess (1948); Richard Chase’s Quest for Myth (1949); Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949); Philip Wheelwright’s The Burning Fountain (1954) and his Metaphor and Reality (1962); B.[arbara] Seward’s The Symbolic Rose (1960); Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (1957) and ‘The Archetypes of Literature’ in Fables of Identity (1963), plus several other inquiries.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
“Vocationalism: An educational philosophy or pedagogy, claiming that the content of the curriculum should be governed by its occupational or industrial utility, and marketability as human capital.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
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