Radney, J. Randolph. 1996.
(entire text follows:)
As part of the explanation for the site In
other words: a lexicon of the humanities, the following
is offered:
Our aim is to provide a way for scholars to cross over from one discipline to another in their studies. As inquirers explore the terminology of a new discipline and come to understand the generally accepted reference of terms, this will serve as a basis for learning and communicating in that arena. (Radney and Hung 1996).
Even a beginning or cursory study of rhetoric will point out that
any statement makes certain assumptions that 'clarify' or 'determine'
which conclusions can be drawn from the statement and which are
excluded. If this is so, then what would be the assumptions/conclusions
of the above statement explaining the web site? It is the goal
of this paper to answer this question, and in so doing, to offer
an apology (in both senses of the term) for the existence and
growth of the site. I will first present some problems that seem
inherent in the defining of terms. Next, I will proceed to a review
of similar works that reveal possible starting points of a lexicon.
Finally, I will discuss the current structure of the lexicon and
plans for future development.
Pick up any work on a subject that you have never read before,
and you will soon be struck by terms that you either do not understand
at all or that you previously understood in a way that seems irreconcilable
with the present context. Take a class on the subject and you
will spend a great deal of time learning how to use terms you
never saw or used before in ways you had never thought, in order
to satisfy your instructor that you indeed 'know the subject'
and are prepared to enter the dialog of those who have been initiated
into the discourse before you.
Within a discipline, terms provide the way of seeing for that
discipline. If you change the terms, you will change the seeing;
if you don't know the terms, you don't see anything, at least
not anything you can report in the discourse of the field. One
might almost say that the terms 'unlock' the discourse of a discipline.
During the course of our developing the web site, Vitanza recommended
to me that I should study Raymond Williams'
Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society.
Notice that the very use of the term Keyword in the title
implies the metaphor of opening, entrance, access, and the like.
If we accept such a narrative of the rise of terminology in a
field, we may still wonder whether scholars within a discipline
might not use the terms to establish a territory in the field,
then discard those terms in favor of others. This might be one
way to understand what Kuhn (1962) calls
a paradigm shift. However, it also seems true that to the extent
the terminology changes, so does the territory. It is not just
that fields are defined by their terms, they are constituted by
their terms. Therefore, the use of different terms in a discipline
might be understood as 'redefining' the discipline just as easily
as the reverse.
I could say that a disciplinary discourse defines the terms it
uses, or alternatively, that the terms used define the discourse,
but there is no single construction that expresses what I need
to say about the relationship of the two, term and text, within
the English language (or possibly in any language). What I need
here is a construction for the verb 'define' that is both active
and passive simultaneously.
I can come close by using the genitive construction, as I did
in the title of this paper, ''The definition of terms and the
definition of discourse'', and specifically claiming both the
subjective and objective references in its use, but there is lack
of overt reference to the contradiction, 'terms (are) define(d
by) discourse'. By the same token I could have used some participial
constructions that are ambiguous and titled the paper ''Defining
terms and defining discourse''. In such an example, however, one
of the possible interpretations is that people are the definers
of either discourse, terms, or both, and that is precisely what
I want to de-emphasize in my discussion.
Schiffrin (1994) has described the
use of language along the lines of similar ambiguities saying:
Language and context co-constitute one another: language contextualizes and is contextualized, such that language does not just function ''in'' context, language also forms and provides context. One particular context is social interaction. Language, culture, and society are grounded in interaction: they stand in a reflexive relationship with the self, the other, and the self-other relationship, and it is out of these mutually constitutive relationships that discourse is created (134).
At this point it might be wise to consult Burke
on the relation/ratio of scene-agent and its relevance to
the present discussion. Though there are many possible ways of
describing the players and the environment of the use of terms
in discourse, one possible way would be to conceive of the discourse
as the scene within which the terms act as agents. There would
then be an interplay of term and text, with text constraining
term and term changing text (7-9).
Another idea of Burke that might contribute
to understanding the issues here concerns the use of terms in
relation to what they are intended to describe. He wrote that:
All thought tends to name things not because they are precisely as named, but because they are not quite as named, and the name is designated as a somewhat hortatory device, to take up the slack (54 ).
I would like to extend the hortatory idea of Burke and think of
a reverberation of exhortation in the use of terms. Simultaneously,
the term exhorts: 1) the speaker to conceive the concept as conforming
to the discourse; 2) the discourse to confine its focus to that
of the term; and 3) the concept to be what society regards the
term to express.
With all the reverberation going on, perhaps we never actually
hear someone talking to us. This is precisely what Derrida
asserts:
It should be recognized that it is in the specific zone of this imprint and this trace, in the temporalization of a lived experience which is neither in the world nor in ''another world'', which is not more sonorous than luminous, not more in time than in space, that differences appear among the elements or rather produce them, make them emerge as such and constitute the texts, the chains, and the systems of traces. These chains and systems cannot be outlined except in the fabric of this trace or imprint. The unheard difference between the appearing and the appearance (between the ''world'' and ''lived experience'') is the condition of all other differences, of all other traces, and it is already a trace. This last concept is thus absolutely and by rights ''anterior'' to all physiological problematics concerning the nature of the engramme [the unit of engraving], or metaphysical problematics concerning the meaning of absolute presence whose trace is thus opened to deciphering. The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general. Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute origin of sense in general. The trace is the differance which opens appearance and signification. Articulating the living upon the nonliving in general, origin of all repetition, origin of ideality, the trace is not more ideal than real, not more intelligible than sensible, not more a transparent signification than an opaque energy and no concept of metaphysics can describe it. And as it is a fortiori anterior to the distinction between regions of sensibility, anterior to sound as much as to light, is there a sense in establishing a ''natural'' hierarchy between the sound-imprint, for example, and the visual (graphic) imprint? The graphic image is not seen; and the acoustic image is not heard. The difference between the full unities of the voice remains unheard. And, the difference in the body of the inscription is also invisible (119).
The differences (differances, really) are in exactly (or at least)
the three dimensions we named above: 1) the term does not precisely
conform to the concept called for by the discourse within which
it occurs; 2) the discourse does not precisely confine itself
to the focus called for by its terms; and 3) the concept does
not precisely station itself at the boundaries called for by society's
use of the term. These three phenomena provide rich and varied
hypertextuality to the most 'precise' discourse, an inescapably
'creative' ore from which we refine the remarkable illusion of
technical discourse. In addition, the hypertextuality may (and
almost always does in fact) also have the effect of distracting
us as speakers from the point we are trying to make and as listeners
from the point we might have understood.
With these ideas in mind, I would like to turn now to a more specific
discussion of similar lexical work that has been done in the humanities.
As an introduction to his work, Williams
recounts:
It was not easy then, and it is not much easier now, to describe this work in terms of a particular academic subject. The book has been classified under headings as various as cultural history, historical semantics, history of ideas, social criticism, literary history and sociology. This may at times be embarrassing or even difficult, but academic subjects are not eternal categories, and the fact is that, wishing to put certain general questions in certain specific ways, I found that the connections I was making, and the area of concern which I was attempting to describe, were in practice experienced and shared by many other people, to whom the particular study spoke. One central feature of this area of interest was its vocabulary, which is significantly not the specialized vocabulary of a specialized discipline, though it often overlaps with several of these, but a general vocabulary ranging from strong, difficult and persuasive words in everyday usage to words which, beginning in particular specialized contexts, have become quite common in descriptions of wider areas of thought and experience' (13-4).
Later he adds:
I have emphasized this process of the development of Keywords because it seems to me to indicate its dimension and purpose. It is not a dictionary or glossary of a particular academic subject. It is not a series of footnotes to dictionary histories or definitions of a number of words. It is, rather, the record of an inquiry into a vocabulary: a shared body of words and meanings in our most general discussions, in English, of the practices and institutions which we group as culture and society. Every word which I have included has at some time, in the course of some argument, virtually forced itself on my attention because the problems of its meanings seemed to me inextricably bound up with the problems it was being used to discuss. I have often got up from writing a particular note and heard the same word again, with the same sense of significance and difficulty: often, of course, in discussions and arguments which were rushing by to some other destination. I began to see this experience as a problem of vocabulary, in two senses: the available and developing meanings of known words, which needed to be set down; and the explicit but as often implicit connections which people were making, in what seemed to me, again and again, particular formations of meaning-- ways not only of discussing but at another level of seeing many of our central experiences. What I had then to do was not only to collect examples, and look up or revise particular records of use, but to analyze, as far as I could, some of the issues and problems that were there inside the vocabulary, whether in single words or in habitual groupings. I called these words Keywords in two connected senses: they are significant, binding words in certain activities and their interpretation; they are significant, indicative words in certain forms of thought. Certain uses bound together certain ways of seeing culture and society, not least in these two most general words. Certain other uses seemed to me to open up issues and problems, in the same general area, of which we all needed to be very much more conscious. Notes on a list of words; analyses of certain formations: these were the elements of an active vocabulary Ñ a way of recording, investigating and presenting problems of meaning in the area in which the meanings of culture and society have formed (15).
McLaughlin has also suggested many
of the same points (as well as several new ones) in his discussion
of the considerations he and Lentricchia made in their work:
Our concentration on the terms of criticism comes out of the conviction that the language we use in talking and writing about literature sets the boundaries within which we read. If we want to get at the assumptions that shape our reading practice, we should pay attention to the language we use as critical writers. In the terms of critical discourse, especially in the ''ordinary language'' of criticism, we can see at work the framing and shaping power of our particular brand of common sense. Almost all of the terms we chose are common and ordinary language, not technical terms or neologisms. They are terms that are particularly prone to the forgetfulness that comes with habitual use. We can put them into play as though they were neutral terms, exerting no particular pressure, commonly understood and beyond question. They do such good work for us that they make themselves invisible.
The essays in this volume pose problems for such an easy process. They insist that terms have a history, that they shape how we read, and that they engage larger social and political questions. They also assume that the meaning of the terms is a matter of dispute, which is simply true in today's theoretical environment. The essays want to spotlight terms that function most efficiently when they are working behind the scenes. In some ways the model for our interest in the history of terms is the work of Raymond Williams, in such books as Keywords and Marxism and Literature. Williams's point is not simply that the meanings of terms change, but that their history impinges on their current use, and that the radical changes that terms undergo suggest that there is no stable and reliable meaning for any term. Terms cannot be used as though they were neutral instruments. Terms such as ''culture'' and ''race'' have been put to so many uses in so many different social and interpretive settings that no use of them can be innocent. Using a term commits you to a set of values and strategies that it has developed over the history of its use. It is possible to use a term in a new way, but it is not possible to escape the term's past....
In addition to emphasizing the historicity of terms, the essays in this volume also demonstrate that critical terms take part in larger social and cultural debates. Terms cannot simply be used and discarded-- using them places you inside an argument, both in the sense that others might deny the importance of the term, and that they might disagree with your definition and deployment of the term. Furthermore, the argument is not a ''purely literary'' one; using a term engages you, whether you know it or not, in specific cultural and political arguments as well. If you read and interpret literature from the perspective that the term ''gender'' provides, you will cross with critics who see it as irrelevant to the study of literature (which, they might claim, transcends gender). You will also have to make clear exactly how the term functions for you, which will engage you in yet another debate with others who use the term differently. As a result, your use of the term had better be conscious and self-aware, taking account of the commitments that the term makes for you, because even without your awareness the term will make commitments-- whether you like it or not. The term still exerts its power. But an unselfconscious use of a term can experience that power only as a limitation, a blindness that cannot be detected. A more critical use of the term allows a clearer sense of what it enables as well as what it neglects and, thereby, provides a degree of control for the reader at work. Of course, it is impossible to gain perfect control of terminology. We make commitments whenever we use language, and they are too many and too complex to be fully mastered. But using a term critically at least increases our awareness of the commitments we do make' (3-5).
Later McLaughlin also adds the following
crucial information:
It is the purpose of this text to examine terms in order to discover the positions they provide for us as readers. These terms commit us to particular values, and if we are aware of those commitments, we can legitimately take the positions we inhabit. Every reading promotes the values that make it possible. A reading is a rhetorical act within a huge cultural debate; it is a matter of taking sides. Taking sides does not involve an apocalyptic moment of choice between two neatly opposed schools of thought-- socialism or individualism, patriarchy or feminism, closed or open models of interpretation. Rather, taking sides develops over time, through a series of decisions and commitments in specific reading situations that develop into a cultural style, a way of negotiating experience. Terms remind us that reading is social and therefore political. Readers need to know how the use of a term enlists them into the debate (7).
McLaughlin concludes his introduction
to the book by saying:
If to define is to close off questions and meanings, then the essays in this collection are not definitions. They question the terms, searching for their powers and their weaknesses. Terms are inevitable-- no discourse could go on without them. But they can be used in various ways, unselfconsciously, as though their meaning were self-evident, or consciously, with the awareness that using a term shapes reading and interpretation. Awareness is not freedom, but freedom from terminology is not the goal. A more modest and attainable goal is learning to negotiate the complexities of life in language. Learning how terms work is a part of learning how meaning is produced, and this, in turn, is part of the process of entering into that productive activity (8).
In our work, we would also have similar views. We realize that
terminology is not confined to one particular discipline, that
there is interconnectedness among disciplines, terms, and what
might be called the lineage of terms. In addition, we also see
terms as a locus of dispute in discourse in the humanities, and,
as such, these are not neutral, but have emotive content and take
a stance in argumentation, or in other words, a side. Even more,
words carry the assumptions and values of the side of the argument
that uses the term with a particular reference. Finally, it is
neither possible nor desirable to attain a valueless, neutral
vocabulary; what can be achieved is a heightened awareness and
a more informed use of terms in discourse. In consideration of
these things then, I would like to explain the site's current
construction, as well as plans that we have to expand the project
and interlink the information in the future.
Presently the web site is organized into disciplines, with a bibliography
and collection of quotes within each discipline. Though there
is some cross-referencing between disciplines, it obviously lacks
completeness and system in its implementation. We began our work
within each field by collecting quotes from readings that were
required in coursework. Quotes were included to reflect either
crucial points in the author's argumentation or the special use
of a term. We believe that such a collection will make the selection
of key terms for that field evident. This will allow us to compile
a glossary of important terminology for each field. Using the
LinguaLinks software program for linguistic and culture analysis,
we will compile the quotes into text files and develop a lexical
database of humanities terms in which information will be linked
to the source text and its including discipline in such a way
as to allow the reader to browse terms and their text occurrences
to get familiar with the vocabularies of a discipline. These will
be displayed using a format that will allow such browsing over
the Internet, complete with all of the linking necessary to help
the reader to browse freely.
Without doubt, any scholar who studies the site will find areas
where our choices could be supplemented or corrected. We hope
that such people will take the time to advise us of their evaluations.
Over time, this would help us to make the site grow in other dimensions
than our coursework would allow. It is also likely that such contributions
will inject a certain instability into the work, or as Foucault
writes:
In the sense that this slender wedge I intend to slip into the history of ideas consists not in dealing with meanings possibly lying behind this or that discourse, but with discourse as regular series and distinct events, I fear I recognise in this wedge a tiny (odious, too, perhaps) device permitting the introduction, into the very roots of thought, of notions of chance, discontinuity and materiality (159-60).
From our point of view this is greatly desirable. We want to provide
a forum for interaction and on-going revision, as well as for
the publication of positions of scholarship that contend with
other positions in regard to the meaning or use of terms. The
goal is neither singularity nor harmony of voices, but of inclusion
despite dissonance that may lead to listening and consubstantial
interaction.
I began by saying that I wanted to give an apology for the site.
I have indicated some of the developments in the humanities that
call for such a research work; I have also indicated how we plan
to develop the site and how far this work will fall short of many
expectations that might be placed upon it, particularly for those
who believe in the inherent stability of words and who visit the
site looking to authorize some particular position or to be authorized
to exclude some voice. At present the site is only the work of
two beginning scholars working part-time to develop an understanding
of some of their coursework. Even with many more scholars involved
(and we do invite participation!), the work will still be massively
beyond our efforts. It is (and will be for some time) a very sorry
effort, but it is a beginning, nonetheless. We hope you are pleased
by it enough to use it, and challenged or angered by it enough
to write.
Burke, Kenneth. 1945. A grammar of
motives. Berkeley: Univ. of California Pr. (Reference 1)(Reference 2)
Derrida, Jacques. 1986 [1967, 1977]. ''Of
grammatology''. Translated [1976] by Gayatri C. Spivak. In Hazard
Adams and Leroy Searle (eds.), Critical Theory Since 1965.
Tallahassee: Florida State Univ. Pr. 94-119. (Reference 1)
Foucault, Michel. 1986 [1970, 1971].
''The discourse on language''. Trans. (1971) by Rupert Swyer.
In Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle (eds.), Critical Theory
Since 1965. Tallahassee: Florida State Univ. Pr. 148-62.
(Reference 1)
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The structure
of scientific revolutions. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr.
(Reference 1)
McLaughlin, Thomas. 1990. ''Introduction''.
In Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (eds.), Critical
Terms For Literary Study. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr.
263-73. (Reference 1)(Reference 2)(Reference 3)
Radney, J. Randolph, and LiChien Hung.
1996. In other words: a lexicon of the humanities.
http://www.sil.org/humanities/index.html (20 April 1996). (Reference 1)
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1994. Approaches to discourse. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. (Reference 1)
Williams, Raymond. 1976 [1983]. Keywords:
a vocabulary of culture and society. New York: Oxford.
(Reference 1)(Reference 2)(Reference 3)
Last modified: 22 May 1996
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