Words and Meaning
How do words bear meaning? The notion that a word means what it stands for – its denotation - will be examined and found wanting because logical analysis is only able to illuminate limited areas of language. It will be then suggested that metaphysical speculations about the sort of entities named by words are at best unhelpful. The idea that words get their meaning from the way they are used in public discourse will then be introduced as potentially more useful, although some problems with this approach will also be noted. Finally it will be suggested, very briefly, that an answer to this question may best be found in the common human condition – how we operate in the world using language.
It is attractive to assume that the meaning of a word is the entity it denotes. There are many cases where this definition will do. For example in the sentence,
John sat at the table.
‘John’ denotes a person and ‘table’ denotes an object. This seems straightforward. There are sentences, however, where the meaning is apparently clear but where the entities are not so clear cut.
The sentence below has a clear meaning:
The singing was divine but the acting was wooden.
The proposition carried by this sentence is easily understood. However, the entities ‘singing’ and ‘acting’ are not so clear. They are ongoing actions not so clearly defined as tables and chairs. Furthermore, the metaphorical qualifiers ‘divine’ and ‘wooden’ do not help do not sharpen the meaning. Is ‘divine’, for example, merely a fanciful replacement for ‘enjoyable’? A whole conversation about the nature of singing and acting might follow such an utterance.
Denotation and questions of logical form do not seem to be helpful in explaining the meanings of words in ordinary talk although human beings do seem to be impelled towards rational discussion. We habitually give reasons for things. For example, a discussion about ‘the greatest footballer ’ often finishes with extensive debate about what the defining criteria might be (a verbal dispute about connotation). Subsequently the argument often then turns to which player best meets these criteria (arguments to establish denotation). Whatever the case the denotation for ‘the greatest footballer’ is problematical. Much of this kind of discourse is based upon opinions. These opinions may or may not be true. This in no way affects the meanings intended by the speakers.
As a conclusion, Rwanda and Bosnia genocide was about ethnic conflicts for gaining power or for land, mass murders, area destructions, civilians deaths, hiding evidence and many more. Also genocide has different stages to categories its specification such as classification, symbolisms, discrimination, dehumanization, extermination, preparation and many more. As the end of genocide there were deaths of some ethnic groups too which are hardly found or known as minority groups. We should further inspire and encourage future world people to prevent such a tragedy like the Rwanda and Bosnia and other genocide conflict from ever happening again.
The Bosnian genocide was a war that started in 1992 and ended in 1995. The purpose of learning this genocide is that we can be aware of what an genocide is considering that there are many different definitions of genocide. This was an example of genocide that we can learn from and know what genocide is so we can stop genocide from occurring in the future because we are the next generation of the
"While fighting for victory the German soldier will observe the rules for chivalrous warfare. Cruelties and senseless destruction are below his standard" , or so the commandment printed in every German Soldiers paybook would have us believe. Yet during the Second World War thousands of Jews were victims of war crimes committed by Nazi's, whose actions subverted the code of conduct they claimed to uphold and contravened legislation outlined in the Geneva Convention. It is this legislature that has paved the way for the Jewish community and political leaders to attempt to redress the Nazi's violation, by prosecuting individuals allegedly responsible. Convicting Nazi criminals is an implicit declaration by post-World War II society that the Nazi regime's extermination of over five million Jews won't go unnoticed.
...everal times since the Holocaust, and the previous three are a few of the worst. These tragedies that occur throughout history are caused purely by fellow human beings, and it is up to human beings to stop them. As Jack Schwartz says, “Genocide is an attempt to exterminate a people, not alter their behavior.” It is the responsibility of not one, but all. The world needs to make these crimes against civilization come to a halt, once and for all.
“The four chief prosecutors of the International Military Tribunal (IMT)—Robert H. Jackson (United States), Francois de Menthon (France), Roman A. Rudenko (Soviet Union), and Sir Hartley Shawcross (Great Britain)—hand down indictments against 24 leading Nazi officials,” (“The Nuremberg Trials”). Alongside the judges stood A prosecutorial staff of over 600 Americans plus additional hundreds from the other three powers assembled and began interviewing potential witnesses and identifying documents from among the 100,000 captured for the prosecution case,” (Doug Linder). This was a time in history that really brought together the great nations and made them what they are
The Holocaust is one of the most infamous genocides in history. “Genocide” is defined as “the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group” (“Genocide”). According to Lila Perl, author of Genocide: Stand by or Intervene, “genocide differs from civil and political wars, in which great numbers of both combatants and civilians die, in that genocide has a particular intention” (6). There have been multiple cases of genocide throughout the world, despite people saying “never again.” Genocide is always intentional and, regardless of the fear it causes, it can always be prevented. People simply need to stand up for themselves and their fellow civilians in order for things, as atrocious as genocide, not to happen. During the Holocaust the surrounding countries had not intervened soon enough, hence the outcome was far worse than it could have been.
During the Bosnian genocide there were different roles of ultra nationalism, for example the ICTY helped protect Bosnia during the genocide. The ICTY is one of the reasons this genocide ended so
Tattoos are not only a marking on the skin, but also a symbol representing something or someone in a person’s life. In Skin Deep, written by Alexis Keinlen, also a journalist and literary editor of Ricepaper Magazine, wrote the article Skin Deep giving several points on the history of tattoos and also letting her viewers know her opinion on the topic of tattoos because of religious reasons or even as low as how the person with tattoos looks compared to someone with zero tattoos. People should look past on how tattoos may look because when choosing the right tattoo with meaning than it shouldn’t matter what others think because the tattoo resembles something special in the person’s life.
Furthermore, the realist holds that the existence of universals follows that that words such as ‘red’ have a particular meaning, and the meaning itself will be a universal of a sort. This is refuted by Quine holding that the use of predicates can be adequately accounted for without supposing that universals or meanings exist (Loux 2006: 36). He reasons that meaningfulness of sentences do not possess an abstract universal of ‘meaning’. The rejection of the attempt to introduce universals as ‘meanings’ is an unconvincing argument by Quine. This is because he objects to the realist argument simply by refusing to admit meanings. This can be seen as an evasion of the problem by providing a poor response. Quine uses the word ‘meaningful’ in his analysis
The Nuremberg Trials was unethically run and violated the rights of the Nazi leaders who were convicted of committing crimes against humanity. Primarily because the Allies sought to use the trials as a way to remind the Germans, who won the war ‘again’. Thus making it similar to the Treaty of Versailles in (19- ), through implying this notion of “Victors’ Justice”. Nevertheless, the Allies did to an extent ‘try’ to make the tribunal as ethical as possible,
One of the more interesting concepts is the "Chain of signifiers", in which the signifier itself points not to the signified, or concept, but rather points to another set of signifiers, which each point to another set of signifiers, ad infinitum. It is this idea that "the word...never reaches the point when it refers to a signified" (Tyson 252) that positions language as nonreferential, with no end-game where a signified is met and all the supplements provided by the signifiers are resolves. There is no point at which language "refer[s] to things in the world" (252) instead relying on how we, through our own structures of signification, view concepts. Each chain of signifiers is dependent upon the structure that acts upon the creation of meaning and experience, and no longer dependent on the signified itself. For instance, a text never reaches the point where it relays the disparate ideas that formulated the text in the mind of the author - it instead is formulated of supplements that point to poten...
"Iraqi Head Seeks Arms." (Pinker, p. 69) Quiproquo, double entendre, pun. These are instances of finding more than one possible meaning to an event, most often a phrase. We can't read Shakespeare, or Molière, or the works of many other authors if we don't believe that something can have more than one meaning. "There is no topic in philosophy that has received more attention than meaning, in its multifarious manifestations." (Dennett, p. 401) Meaning is one of our most intimate bedfellows – it is always in our minds. In Webster's Third New International Dictionary, meaning is defined as follows;
The English language is filled with words that help convey meaning to stories without saying the actual meaning. These useful words are called figures of language and not only are they important in daily life, but they are a necessity in books and plays to deliver to the point home to the reader or make him on her laugh. The English language is an extremely complex and diverse collection of words. This is one of the many reasons why English is a worldwide language, because there are thousands of way to express a single thought.
One word out of an entire novel seems minute, but when that word is the “n-word” and is repeated two hundred and nineteen times people begin to question its necessity. Despite the fact that people are uncomfortable with this word, its use is crucial in the book, and the word itself is unavoidable in today’s society. The “n-word” in any situation is like a game of Operation depending on the context it will bother the other players with the shocking buzzing from the speaker’s lapse in words, or it will go unnoticed by the participants. In today’s society this single word is unavoidable including the title of Kayne West’s song “Ni**as In Paris.” Over time the “n-word” once used as a derogatory term has transformed in the African American culture to a word of selective comradery. Although the frequent use of this word brings a race together, it also contributes to a loose of consideration to those being repressed in slavery and racial segregation in American history. While today’s version of the word may dull the pain of slavery, this word “is attached to one of the most vibrant cultures in the Western world. And yet the culture is inextricably linked to the violence that
Blum-Kulka argues that shifts in text meaning occur when “the explicit and implicit meaning potential of the source text changes through translations” (1986:299). In her discussion of the relationship between meaning and cohesion, she quotes Haliday and Hasan’s (1976) words which state that “cohesion ties do much more than provide continuity and thus