What's in a Word?

Robin Meyer outlines how teachers can foster an understanding of the history and evolution of words as an aid to language learning

What's in a Word?

Words are all around us to the point that their complexity is lost in familiarity. The term “word” itself can ambiguously refer to different linguistic concepts: orthographic words, phonological words, grammatical words, word-forms, lexemes, and to an extent lexical items. While it is hard to come up with exception-less criteria for wordhood, some typical properties are that words are writeable and spellable, consist of morphemes, are syntactic units, carry meaning, and interrelate with other words. Moreover, words can be classified and categorized in a number of different ways depending on how they are used, by whom, and to what extent they are established within the lexicon. English has many ways of adding new words to its repertoire through both productive and creative means. “Knowing” a word need not entail knowing every facet of its history and usage, yet there is still more to a word than simply the symbol-to-meaning relation

What's in a word? the discursive construction of 'creativity'.

This work begins with the idea that creativity is a problematic concept generally and in education particularly. I argue that it is necessary to shed a belief in an ʻessenceʼ of creativity in order to understand how knowledge about creativity is produced. In a review of different approaches to creativity I identify the ways in which ʻtruth effectsʼ are produced in scientific and popular texts. Of particular interest here are approaches and assumptions (expressed through language and operations) in the domains of psychology, education and the arts. A post structuralist analytical methodology, drawing particularly on Foucaultʼs work, is justified in relation to the significance of concepts such as discourse, ideology, rhetoric and myth which, I argue, are crucial in understanding how creativity is made meaningful. The primary analysis is of key documents from the last decade which have sought to inform education policy on creativity: All our futures (NACCCE 1999); Creativity: Find it, promote it (QCA 2004); Nurturing creativity in young people (Roberts 2006); Learning: Creative approaches that raise standards (Ofsted 2010a). Attention is given to the discursive processes of authorising particular models of creativity in these documents, the ways in which tensions and contradictions are dealt with and the implications for ʻcreativityʼ in education. An explicitly reflective mode is adopted where appropriate, in order to highlight my epistemological development during the course of the research. This takes the form of ʻinterruptionsʼ between chapters. I argue, ultimately, that there is a case for only operating with the term ʻcreativityʼ in a reflexive, meta-discursive way and that this is a particular necessity in education

What's In A Word: The Damage Of The Abstract In War

Using the initial ideas of Terry Jones of Monty Python and U.S. historian Marilyn B. Young, this paper challenges the use of the abstract in security problems and debates. As Jones states, can you fight and win against an abstract noun? In his case, it was the then-ongoing War on Terror. Jones expands on this idea further, stating that such abstraction has the potential to lead to 'forever wars' as, in this case, terrorism can never be defeated. The re-establishment of direct language based on the greater use of proper nouns exemplifies clarity. Precision in language is not a panacea to strategic issues, but it is the only way to start

What's in a word? Conflicting interpretations of vulnerability in climate change research

In this paper, we discuss two competing interpretations of vulnerability in the climate change literature and consider the implications for both research and policy. The first interpretation, which can be referred to as the “end point” approach, views vulnerability as a residual of climate change impacts minus adaptation. The second interpretation, which takes vulnerability as a “starting point,” views vulnerability as a general characteristic generated by multiple factors and processes. Viewing vulnerability as an end point considers that adaptations and adaptive capacity determine vulnerability, whereas viewing vulnerability as a starting point holds that vulnerability determines adaptive capacity. The practical consequences of these two interpretations are illustrated through the examples of Norway and Mozambique. We show that, if the underlying causes and contexts of vulnerability are not taken into account, there is a danger of underestimating the magnitude (large), scope (social and environmental) and urgency (high) of climate change

What's in a Word? Conversion vs Construction

Dans la langue anglaise, le problème posé par des emplois tels que Will he medal tonight? (commentaire entendu pendant les Jeux Olympiques) ou Is better always good? est souvent traité comme le résultat de la « conversion » d’un nom en verbe, d’un adjectif en nom, etc., un procès qui présuppose que les mots, prêts à employer dans une phrase, sont stockés dans une sorte de lexique mental. On peut mieux expliquer de tels emplois si on adopte, comme point de départ, la perspective traditionnelle selon laquelle le signifié d’un mot comporte un élément lexical et un élément grammatical, et que ces deux constituants sont assemblés chaque fois qu’on a besoin d’un mot pour le discours. Afin de découvrir ce qui permet la création à volonté de mots nouveaux, comme dans Petruchio is Kated de Shakespeare, on partira du postulat que les ressources d’une langue fournissent au sujet parlant non des mots toutfaits, mais plutôt les éléments formateurs des mots

What's in a Word: “sovereignty” in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation

The word “sovereignty” (суверенитет) played a crucial role in Russian political discourse during the second term of Vladimir Putin as the second President of Russia. The word formed part of a pair: “sovereign democracy” (cуверенная демократия), extracted by Vitaliy Tretyakov (2005) and Vladislav Surkov (2006), the ideologist of the regime, from Putin’s first six annual addresses to parliament to 2005. The discourse was encapsulated in the collection of articles, including Putin’s addresses and articles by Medvedev and others, published later in 2006 (Garadja, 2006). I explore these issues in my book on Russia (Bowring, 2013 b). This article explores the role played by “sovereignty in the legal discourse of the Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, Valeriy Zorkin. Mr Zorkin, born in 1943, has been a judge of the Court since its establishment in 1991. He served as Chairman from 1991 to 1993, when the Court was suspended after it declared unconstitutional Boris Yeltsin’s storming of the Supreme Soviet in the White House and, tearing up of the Constitution. He resumed his role as a judge of the Court in 1994, and in 2003 he was again elected Chairman, a post he still holds