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Wooden Language
Wooden language is language that uses vague, ambiguous, abstract or pompous words in order to divert attention from the salient issues.Caparini, Marina; Fluri, Philipp (2006). ''Civil Society and the Security Sector: Concepts and Practices in New Democracies'', LIT Verlag Berlin–Hamburg–Münster, . The French scholar Françoise Thom identified four characteristics of wooden language: abstraction and the avoidance of the concrete, tautologies, bad metaphors, and Manichaeism that divides the world into good and evil.Michiko Kakutani"The death of truth" ''The Guardian'', 14 July 2018 The phrase is a literal translation of the French expression ' which appears to have been coined by Georges Clemenceau in 1919, and became widely used during the 1970s and 1980s after being brought back into French from Russian via Polish. In France, wooden language is commonly and strongly associated with politicians and the conditioning at the elite École nationale d'administration, as attested by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Françoise Thom
Françoise Thom (born 1951) is a French historian and Sovietologist, honorary lecturer in contemporary history at Paris-Sorbonne University. A specialist in post-communist Russia, she is the author of works of political analysis on the country and its leaders. Early life and education Françoise Thom was born in Strasbourg, 1951. Her parents are René Thom, a mathematician known for his theory of catastrophes and winner of the Fields Medal, and of Suzanne Helmlinger. Françoise has two siblings, Elizabeth and Christian. Thom has a degree in Russian. Career She lived for three years in the Soviet Union, then taught Russian in secondary schools in Ferney-Voltaire and Calais. She is a research associate at the Institut français de polémologie. In 1983, she defended a thesis entitled , directed by Alain Besançon at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. She was then appointed lecturer in contemporary history at Paris-Sorbonne University. In 2011, she presented ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tautology (language)
In literary criticism and rhetoric, a tautology is a statement that repeats an idea using near-synonymous morphemes, words or phrases, effectively "saying the same thing twice". Tautology and pleonasm are not consistently differentiated in literature. Like pleonasm, tautology is often considered a fault of style when unintentional. Intentional repetition may emphasize a thought or help the listener or reader understand a point. Sometimes logical tautologies like "Boys will be boys" are conflated with language tautologies, but a language tautology is not inherently true, while a logical tautology always is. Etymology The word was coined in Koine Greek from ('the same') plus ('word' or 'idea'), and transmitted through 3rd-century Latin and French . It first appeared in English in the 16th century. The use of the term logical tautology was introduced in English by Wittgenstein in 1919, perhaps following Auguste Comte's usage in 1835. Examples * "Convicted felon", a common E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to create a likeness or an Analogy, analogy. Analysts group metaphors with other types of figurative language, such as antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy, and simile. According to Grammarly, "Figurative language examples include similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, allusions, and idioms." One of the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature comes from the "All the world's a stage" monologue from ''As You Like It'': All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts, His Acts being seven ages. At first, the infant... :—William Shakespeare, ''As You Like It'', 2/7 This quotation expresses a metaphor because the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manichaeism
Manichaeism (; in ; ) is an endangered former major world religion currently only practiced in China around Cao'an,R. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff ''Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times''. SUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 founded in the 3rd century CE by the Parthian prophet Mani (216–274 CE), in the Sasanian Empire. Manichaeism teaches an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light, whence it came. Mani's teaching was intended to "combine", succeed, and surpass the teachings of Platonism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Marcionism, Hellenistic and Rabbinic Judaism, Gnostic movements, Ancient Greek religion, Babylonian and other Mesopotamian religions, and mystery cults.Arendzen, John (1 October 1910).Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Splitting (psychology)
Splitting, also called binary thinking, dichotomous thinking, black-and-white thinking, all-or-nothing thinking, or thinking in extremes, is the failure in a person's thinking to bring together the dichotomy of both perceived positive and negative qualities of something into a cohesive, realistic whole. It is a common defense mechanism, wherein the individual tends to think in extremes (e.g., an individual's actions and motivations are ''all'' good or ''all'' bad with no middle ground). This kind of dichotomous interpretation is contrasted by an acknowledgement of certain nuances known as "shades of gray". Splitting can include different contexts, as individuals who use this defense mechanism may "split" representations of their own mind, of their own personality, and of others. Splitting is observed in Cluster B personality disorders such as borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, as well as schizophrenia and depression. In dissociative identity ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new word or phrase ( lexeme) in the target language. For instance, the English word ''skyscraper'' has been calqued in dozens of other languages, combining words for "sky" and "scrape" in each language, as for example in German, in Portuguese, in Dutch, in Spanish, in Italian, in Turkish, and ''matenrō'' in Japanese. Calques, like direct borrowings, often function as linguistic gap-fillers, emerging when a language lacks existing vocabulary to express new ideas, technologies, or objects. This phenomenon is widespread and is often attributed to the shared conceptual frameworks across human languages. Speakers of different languages tend to perceive the world through common categori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Clemenceau
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French statesman who was Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920. A physician turned journalist, he played a central role in the politics of the French Third Republic, Third Republic, particularly amid the end of the First World War. He was a key figure of the Independent Radicals, advocating for the separation of church and state, as well as the amnesty of the Communards exiled to New Caledonia. After about 1,400,000 French soldiers were killed between the Schlieffen Plan, German invasion and Armistice of 11 November 1918, Armistice, he demanded a total victory over the German Empire. Clemenceau stood for reparations, a transfer of colonies, strict rules to prevent a rearming process, as well as the restitution of Alsace–Lorraine, which had been annexed to Germany in 1871. He achieved these goals through the Treaty of Versailles signed at the Paris Peace Conferen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
École Nationale D'administration
The (; ENA; ) was a French ''grande école'', created in 1945 by the then Provisional Government of the French Republic, provisional chief of government Charles de Gaulle and principal co-author of the Constitution of France, 1958 Constitution Michel Debré, to democratize access to the senior French civil service, civil service. The school was frequently criticized from the 1970's onward for having built an incredibly elitist culture as well as being a stronghold for Technocracy, technocrats. As a result, it was dissolved on 31 December 2021 and replaced by the Institut national du service public (INSP). The ENA selected and supervised the initial training of senior French officials. It was considered to be one of the most academically demanding French schools, both because of its low acceptance rates and because a large majority of its candidates had already graduated from other elite schools in the country such as Sciences Po or the École polytechnique, École Polytechnique. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel Butor
Michel Butor (; 14 September 1926 – 24 August 2016) was a French poet, novelist, teacher, essayist, art critic and translator. Life and work Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul, a suburb of Lille, the third of seven children. His parents were Émile Butor (1891–1960), a railroad inspector and Anna ( Brajeux, 1896–1972). He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. In 1950–51, he taught French in Minya, Egypt, followed by teaching assignments in Manchester (1951–53), Thessaloniki (1954–55) and Geneva (1956–57). In 1958, he married Marie-Josèphe (née Mas); they had four daughters. His first novel, ''Passage de Milan'', was published in 1954, followed by ''L'Emploi du temps'' (1956), which won the Prix Fénéon, and by '' La Modification'' in 1957, which won the Prix Renaudot. His final novel, ''Degrés'', was published in 1960. In 1960, he was a visiting professor at Bryn Mawr College and Middlebury College. His travels ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General De Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free France, Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 to restore democracy in France. In 1958, amid the May 1958 crisis in France, Algiers putsch, he came out of retirement when appointed Prime Minister of France, Prime Minister by President René Coty. He rewrote the Constitution of France and founded the French Fifth Republic, Fifth Republic after approval by 1958 French constitutional referendum, referendum. He was elected President of France later that year, a position he held until his resignation in 1969. Born in Lille, he was a decorated officer of World War I, wounded several times and taken prisoner of war (POW) by the Germans. During the interwar period, he advocated mobile armoured divisions. During the German invasion of May 1940, he led an armoured divisi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newspeak
In the dystopian novel '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also published as ''1984''), by George Orwell, Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania, the Party created Newspeak, which is a controlled language of simplified grammar and limited vocabulary designed to limit a person's ability for critical thinking. The Newspeak language thus limits the person's ability to articulate and communicate abstract concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will, which are thoughtcrimes, acts of personal independence that contradict the ideological orthodoxy of Ingsoc collectivism. In the appendix to the novel, "The Principles of Newspeak", Orwell explains that Newspeak follows most rules of English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning. The political cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both authoritarian communism and fascism), and support of democratic socialism. Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the Utopian and dystopian fiction, dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as George Orwell bibliograph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
