Tag Archives: term of art

Term of Art: Polysemy

Posted on March 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“polysemy: The property of a single word which has two or more distinct but related senses. Thus the noun screen is polysemous, since it is used variously of a fire screen, a cinema screen, a television screen, and so on.

Compare homonymy. The difference, in principle, is that in cases of homonymy the senses are quite unconnected; therefore they are not treated as belonging to the same word. But in many cases, it is hard to decide, and in theories of meaning the distinction is not always seen as valid.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Term of Art: Monograph

Posted on March 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Monograph (noun): A scholarly paper or book on a particular subject; special essay or treatise on a single thing or topic. Adjective: monographic, monographical; adverb: monographically.

‘I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this, and written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar and cigarette tobacco.’ Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery‘”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Term of Art: Rhyme, also, Rime

Posted on March 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Rhyme, also, rime: A general and literary term for the effect produced by using similar sounds: in the last stressed vowel (fire/lyre/desire/aspire) and in following vowels and consonants (inspiring/retiring; admiringly/conspiringly). Rhyme has been a major feature of English verse since the early medieval period, and is widely regarded as essential to it, although a great deal of verse is unrhymed.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Term of Art: Cognitive Sociology

Posted on March 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Cognitive Sociology: A version of ethnomethodology which examines the problematic nature of ‘meaning’ in everyday life, and seeks to integrate ethnomethodology with linguistics (deep structures), on the one hand, and traditional sociology (normative or surface rules) on the other. The major proponent is the American sociologist Aaron V. Cicourel, who has studied many apparently diverse phenomena—including crime, deafness, education, and research methods—in an attempt to identify the underlying social organization and ‘negotiated order’ of everyday life.”

Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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Term of Art: Digression

Posted on March 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Digression (noun): A turning aside or straying from the main discourse or topic; departure from the theme; excursive passage. Adjective: digressive, digressional; adverb: digressively; verb: digress.

‘He got a D plus because they kept yelling “Digression!” at him all the time. For instance, he made this speech about this farm his father bought in Vermont. They kept yelling “Digression!” at him the whole time he was making it, and his teacher, Mr. Vinson, gave him an F on it because he hadn’t told what kind of animals and vegetables and stuff grew on the farm and all.’” J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Term of Art: Heuristic

Posted on March 11, 2020 | Leave a comment

heu*ris*tic adj

  1. serving to indicate or point out; stimulating interest as a means of furthering investigation.
  2. encouraging a person to learn, discover, understand, or solve problems on his or her own, as by experimenting, evaluating possible answers or solutions, or by trial and error: a heuristic teaching method.
  3. of, pertaining to, or based on experimentation, evaluation, or trial and error methods.
  4. Computers, Math. Pertaining to a trial-and-error method of problem solving method used when an algorithmic method is impractical. –
  5. a heuristic method of argument.
  6. the study of heuristic procedure….

Flexner, Stuart Berg, and Lenore Crary Hauck, eds. Random House Unabridged Dictionary. New York: Random House, 1993.

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Term of Art: Nationally Normed Assessment

Posted on March 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

“nationally normed assessment: A standardized test that has been administered to a national control group reflecting the demographic profile of the target population (e.g. 4th graders) throughout the country. The scores of all subsequent test takers are then compared with the scores of this control (or norming) group.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Historical Materialism

Posted on March 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Historical Materialism: A term applied by Karl Marx himself to his theory of society and history. ‘History entailed the analysis of how particular forms of society had come into existence, and the specific historical concepts within which apparently universal or eternal social forms—state, religion, market, and so forth—were located. Materialism denoted the rejection of Hegelian idealism and the primacy of socio-economic processes and relations. A sustained attempt to defend Marx’s account of the determining role in history played by the productive forces is made by William H. Shaw (Marx’s Theory of History, 1978).”

Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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Term of Art: Indirect Question

Posted on March 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

“indirect question: 1. A question as reported in indirect speech: e.g. where he was in I asked where he was. 2. An utterance with the force of a question which is not in an interrogative form. Thus, the sentence I would like to know his name has the form of a declarative (1); but it might be uttered as an indirect question, with the same intention, in this respect, as ‘What is his name?’ Compare indirect speech act.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Term of Art: Attributive

Posted on March 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Attributive: Indicating modifying of a noun (usually preceding it); not following a copulative verb, e.g., ‘the imposing woman.’”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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