Etymology
The word meaning is the attribution of a meaning, a feeling or significance to a word. Word meaning has historically been subjected to modifications by the dominant class. The attribution of a meaning or context to a word is one of the most powerful political instruments to achieve power. Historically, word meaning was influenced by the dominant class in society or population. Today, instead, there is no clear idea of what decides word meaning, save for conspiracy theories.
Contents
Pre-historical examples
Friedrich Nietzsche, speaking about the morality of winner in his work Genealogy of Morals, cites some examples of words in some languages which have probably undergone a change in their meaning following a victory of a people over another. For instance, the Latin word malus which means both bad and dark haired may take its origin to a previous Celtic invasion of Italy, by which the victorious Celts who had fairer hair than Italian population used to associate the losers with the idea of badness. The English word good looks like god, suggesting power and might, while in German Nietzsche observes that schlicht (simple) is very close to schlecht (bad). That is, the concepts of good and bad, and the words used to express it, were coined by the victorious populations by taking words having different meaning by which they used to associate to goodness or badness.
Christianity
The arrival of Christianity brought to an utter reversal of the meaning of many Latin words. Many words which did not have any particular prejudice were from then on considered negative or positive. This was in accordance to Christian morality of sin, guilt and confession. Furthermore there were even words which completely changed their meaning, for example, captivus (prisoner in classical Latin) became an adjective to point out bad or evil things (today's Italian word cattivo).
Today
There are two ways to consider the struggle to impose a meaning to words in Modern Age:
- Word meaning is not precisely controlled, media (television, newspapers, music) point their attention to some particular common senses, they deem certain thoughts (e.g. anti-racism, advocacy for Marxist human rights, United Nations and immigration) to be good just because everyone agrees. This is the consequence of a lack of political opposition to Cultural Marxism which has become a common sense among people. The most notable example of this is MTV television network, primarily seen by young people.
- There are secret societies who decide what people should think, what should be their idols and the meaning of the words.
Cultural Marxism and the Modern Age
Cultural Marxism is one of the strongest cultural movements in posing problems to word meanings. Many words have no clear meaning:
- Marxist truth, which is now intended to be the official truth.
- Racism, a term coined by Trotsky, which has no clear meaning.
- Hate
- Third world
See also
External links
- Online Etymology Dictionary at EtymOnline.com
