>http://funredes.org/mistica/castellano/emec/produccion/memoria14/0088.html
>
>Utilizar las palabras como términos "maleta" o
>"contenedores", en los que todo entra,
>contribuye a devaluar su sentido, y así en lugar
> de describir ese término termina llevando a la confusión.

I agree with Diego and with Rosa Maria. Our world
is a world of words. If we allow the words to be
devalued, then we have nothing left.

Jose cited Michel Menou. I should also like to cite him:
"Thus an urgent need of recovering the true sense
of the words." in the abstract of Michel J.
Menou, Buzzwords and indicators about the
networked society: metaphor, vacuity or fraud?
http://www.i-r-i-e.net/inhalt/002/ijie_002_19_menou.pdf

As a librarian I am painfully aware of how the
effective management of information is hampered
by lack of precision with words, as an English
teacher I am distressed by the way that
homogenisation of meaning stultifies thought and
hobbles expression, and as a human being I am
horrified at the enormous power unleashed by the
manipulation of language. "Weapons of mass
destruction" kill thousands of people - not the
things themselves, but the words that signify them.

I think that Lewis Carroll's "Alice" is universal
- certainly I have met her in Spanish on Mistica before :-)

One of the characters she meets on the other side
of the looking glass is Humpty Dumpty.

".... There's glory for you!"
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice
said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.
"Of course you don't - till I tell you. I meant
'there's a nice knockdown argument for you!'"
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knockdown argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather
a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it
to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can
make words mean different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

150 years ago when it was first published this
was a fantastic joke for children. Now it is a
nightmare truth. In 1934 Ortega y Gasset told
librarians that they should become "masters of
the raging book". Now he might say instead "masters of the raging word".

And therefore a reason for cultural and
linguistic diversity, multiculturalism in Mistica
- Spanish words, French words, Portuguese words,
English words, negotiating together to create a
common standard of understanding and stability.

Hugs

Deirdre
Nearby Wed Feb 1 20:29:26 2006