Stabilizing Communicative Exchanges
Once the intrinsic tension (dynamic duality) is applied to communicative elements, Centres form that can affect each other. In looking at these influences, the splitting of three Levels: , and demands aTtention. If there are disjunctions here, a communicative event will go astray. Each pole requires input from the other to .
L6: Meanings—New or Usual
As are about making sense of reality, any unfamiliar, original or unorthodox will be experienced as a challenge to the usual standard , sometimes an extremely forceful one.
Of course some struggle or die out because have considerable potency: e.g. the of 'sign' or 'symbol' may actively obstruct website visitors from grasping the offered here.
A person who starts addressing a group of friends by saying "first let us define a few terms" sets them a tough task. He has usually taken ordinary words and loaded them with something new. The obstructive effect in the listeners’ minds of the may make constructive participation in the discussion rather difficult for them.
Although this website does not define concepts, some may have a similar reaction to the two meanings of meaning that I introduce here. However, a cannot block for those who find them necessary. It is the task of this framework to demonstrate this necessity
Examples:
'Gay' used to just mean 'joyful', carefree' 'happy'. During the 20th century. 'gay' took on a . It came to refer to persons, practices and culture associated with homosexuality. People found it more and more difficult to use it in its original sense, until by the close of the 20th century, 'homosexual' became the
'The final solution' took on a during the rise of Hitler and nazism. Its effect was to almost obliterate the such that many have discomfort in using the phrase over half-a-century later.
L5: Terms—Conventional or Invented
Standard or and new or affect each other. Dictionaries of etymology (in the case of verbal terms) explain how and when the first originated. The implication is clear: existing common terms were new at some time in the past.
Many disappear while other persist and soon become as the norm. Sometimes a replaces the in an attempt to inject life. The standard may slowly become obsolete and falls from use and is viewed as archaic.
It is noticeable that many things or processes have a wide range of applicable names (i.e. synonyms), often with minimal or rather subtle shades of differences in their reference.
A benign tolerant influence seems to apply. must accept or tolerate when communication demands this. In general, people seem to prefer those terms with which they are . The exception is where the parallels an invented object or activity of interest to them, and there is no .
draw upon those that are . , for example, often take bits of known terms relevant to the topic and push them together (e.g. psycholinguistics); or they put a conventional prefix or suffix onto an existing term (e.g. neocons). Sometimes work because they intentionally rhyme with an existing term e.g. podcast derives from broadcast, webinar derives from seminar.
In an acronym, the first letters of a series of words make a word which may never have previously existed perhaps because the entity had never previously existed e.g. 'radar' was generated by "radio detection and ranging". 'Laser' has a similar origin.
Not all are neologisms: e.g. businesses must give new names to new products; and every new company has to have its own distinctive name. We can usually see an effort to draw upon what exists: a business is named after the town, or the suburb, or the founder, or its main category of product. Parents-to-be buy books of existing children's names, or name children after an older relative or current celebrity, or a desired virtue or favourite flower.
L3: Significance—Informed or Subjective
Our of events may be intense at times, usually far more intense than a calm dispassionate view would demand: e.g. I may view a bodily symptom either more nonchalantly or more anxiously than is warranted. A doctor's can and should temper my personal view.
Nevertheless the that I attribute affects the doctor's view and what he says to me. While not altering that view, it colours it.
The view of someone who is abrupt, impolite and glares may be that these are of anger. However, a of these signs may suggest that the behaviour is due to embarrassment over an error. The context colours the conventional interpretation.
The next step is about maintaining the flow and sense of a communication by linking levels.
Originally posted: 8-Nov-2013. Last updated: 14-Mar-2016.