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Village Idiot
The village idiot is, in strict terms, a person locally known for ignorance or stupidity but is also a common term for a stereotypically silly or nonsensical person or stock character. Description The term "village idiot" is also used as a stereotype of the mentally disabled. It has also been applied as an epithet for an unrealistically optimistic or naive individual. The village idiot was long considered an acceptable social role, a unique individual who was dependent yet contributed to the social fabric of their community. As early as Byzantine times, the "village idiot" was treated as an acceptable form of disabled individual compatible with then-prevailing normative conceptions of social order. The concept of a "village savant" or "village genius" is closely related, often tied to the concept of pre-industrial anti-intellectualism, as both figures are subjects of both pity and derision.Dols, M.W., 1987: Insanity and its treatment in Islamic society. ''Medical History'' 31 ...
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Frits Van Den Berghe - De Idioot Bij De Vijver
A frit is a ceramic composition that has been fused, Quenching, quenched, and granulated. Frits form an important part of the batches used in compounding vitreous enamel, enamels and ceramic glazes; the purpose of this pre-fusion is to render any soluble and/or toxic components insoluble by causing them to combine with silica and other added oxides.''Dictionary of Ceramics'' (3rd Edition) Edited by Dodd, A. Murfin, D. Institute of Materials. 1994. However, not all glass that is fused and quenched in water is frit, as this method of cooling down very hot glass is also widely used in glass manufacture. According to the ''OED'', the origin of the word "frit" dates back to 1662 and is "a calcinated mixture of sand and fluxes ready to be melted in a crucible to make glass". Nowadays, the unheated raw materials of glass making are more commonly called "glass batch". In antiquity, frit could be crushed to make pigments or shaped to create objects. It may also have served as an intermed ...
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Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th centuryAD, it endured until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The term 'Byzantine Empire' was coined only after its demise; its citizens used the term 'Roman Empire' and called themselves 'Romans'. During the early centuries of the Roman Empire, the western provinces were Latinised, but the eastern parts kept their Hellenistic culture. Constantine I () legalised Christianity and moved the capital to Constantinople. Theodosius I () made Christianity the state religion and Greek gradually replaced Latin for official use. The empire adopted a defensive strategy and, throughout its remaining history, experienced recurring cycles of decline and recovery. It reached its greatest extent un ...
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Social Classes
A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network. Class is a subject of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and social historians. The term has a wide range of sometimes conflicting meanings, and there is no broad consensus on a definition of class. Some people argue that due to social mobility, class boundaries do not exist. In common parlance, the term social class is usually synonymous with socioeconomic class, defined as "people having the same social, economic, cultural, political or educational status", e.g. the working class, "an emerging professional class" etc. However, academics distinguish social class from socioeconomic status, using the former to refer to o ...
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Stereotypes
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalization, generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes make information processing easier by allowing the perceiver to rely on previously stored knowledge in place of incoming information. Stereotypes are often faulty generalization, faulty, inaccurate, and Belief perseverance, resistant to new information. Although stereotypes generally have negative implications, they aren't necessarily negative. They may be positive, neutral, or negative. They can be broken down into two categories: explicit stereotypes, which are conscious, and implicit stereotypes, which are subconscious. Explicit stereotypes An explicit stereotype is a belief about a group that a person is consciously aware of a ...
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Stock Characters
A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a type of character in a narrative (e.g. a novel, play, television show, or film) whom audiences recognize across many narratives or as part of a storytelling tradition or convention. There is a wide range of stock characters, covering people of various ages, social classes and demeanors. They are archetypal characters distinguished by their simplification and flatness. As a result, they tend to be easy targets for parody and to be criticized as clichés. The presence of a particular array of stock characters is a key component of many genres, and they often help to identify a genre or subgenre. For example, a story with the stock characters of a knight-errant and a witch is probably a fairy tale or fantasy. There are several purposes to using stock characters. Stock characters are a time- and effort-saving shortcut for story creators, as authors can populate their tale with existing well-known character types. Another ...
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Developmental Disabilities
Developmental disability is a diverse group of chronic conditions, comprising mental or physical impairments that arise before adulthood. Developmental disabilities cause individuals living with them many difficulties in certain areas of life, especially in "language, mobility, learning, self-help, and independent living".Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013)Developmental disabilities.Retrieved October 18, 2013 Developmental disabilities can be detected early on and persist throughout an individual's lifespan. Developmental disability that affects all areas of a child's development is sometimes referred to as global developmental delay. The most common developmental disabilities are: * Motor disorders, and learning difficulties such as dyslexia, Tourette's syndrome, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and nonverbal learning disorder. * autistic spectrum disorders, Autism spectrum disorder (ASD, formerly the pervasive developmental disorders, PDD umbrella covering Asperg ...
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Court Jester
A jester, also known as joker, court jester, or fool, was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch kept to entertain guests at the royal court. Jesters were also travelling performers who entertained common folk at fairs and town markets, and the discipline continues into the modern day, where jesters perform at historical-themed events. Jester-like figures were common throughout the world, including Ancient Rome, China, Persia, and the Aztec empire. During the post-classical and Renaissance eras, jesters are often thought to have worn brightly coloured clothes and eccentric hats in a motley pattern. Jesters entertained with a wide variety of skills: principal among them were song, music, and storytelling, but many also employed acrobatics, juggling, telling jokes (such as puns and imitation), and performing magic tricks. Much of the entertainment was performed in a comic style. Many jesters made contemporary jokes in word or song about people or events well know ...
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Anti-intellectualism
Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, history, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human pursuits.''A Handbook to Literature'' (1980), Fourth Edition, C. Hugh Holman, Ed. p. 27 Anti-intellectuals may present themselves and be perceived as champions of common folk—populists against political and academic elitism—and tend to see educated people as a status class that dominates political discourse and higher education while being detached from the concerns of ordinary people. Totalitarian governments have, in the past, manipulated and applied anti-intellectualism to repress political dissent. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the following Francoist Spain, dictatorship (1939–1975) of Francisco Franco, the reactionary repression of the White Terror (Spain), White Terror ...
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Social Role
A role (also rôle or social role) is a set of connected behaviors, rights, moral obligation, obligations, beliefs, and social norm, norms as conceptualized by people in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behavior and may have a given individual social status or social position. It is vital to both structural functionalism, functionalist and interactionism, interactionist understandings of society. Social role theory posits the following about social behavior: # The division of labour in society takes the form of the interaction among heterogeneous specialized positions, we call roles. # Social roles included appropriate and permitted forms of behavior and actions that recur in a group, guided by social norms, which are commonly known and hence determine the expectations for appropriate behavior in these roles, which further explains the position of a person in the society. # Roles are occupied by individuals, who are called Actor (UML), actors. ...
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Epithet
An epithet (, ), also a byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) commonly accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a real or fictitious person, place, or thing. It is usually literally descriptive, as in Alfred the Great, Suleiman the Magnificent, Richard the Lionheart, and Ladislaus the Short, or allusive, as in Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, Æthelred the Unready, John Lackland, Mehmed the Conqueror and Bloody Mary. The word ''epithet'' also may refer to an abusive, defamatory, or derogatory word or phrase. This use is criticized by Martin Manser and other proponents of linguistic prescription. H. W. Fowler noted in 1926 that "''epithet'' is suffering a vulgarization that is giving it an abusive imputation." Linguistics Epithets are sometimes attached to a person's name or appear in place of their name, as what might be described as a glorified nickname or sobriquet, and for this reason some linguists have argued that they should be c ...
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Developmental Disability
Developmental disability is a diverse group of chronic conditions, comprising mental or physical impairments that arise before adulthood. Developmental disabilities cause individuals living with them many difficulties in certain areas of life, especially in "language, mobility, learning, self-help, and independent living".Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013)Developmental disabilities.Retrieved October 18, 2013 Developmental disabilities can be detected early on and persist throughout an individual's lifespan. Developmental disability that affects all areas of a child's development is sometimes referred to as global developmental delay. The most common developmental disabilities are: * Motor disorders, and learning difficulties such as dyslexia, Tourette's syndrome, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and nonverbal learning disorder. * Autism spectrum disorder (ASD, formerly the PDD umbrella covering Asperger syndrome and classic autism) causes difficulties in s ...
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