Re: Don't give me words, lasting through time, give me no rhyme, show me!

[becky.rickly@umich.edu (Becky Rickly)]

Like someone before me, I got an error message when I sent the message below:

>Put me down for "empower".  I'm terribly afraid that in our flurry to
>empower everyone, we end up doing folks a disservice.  How about we replace
>it w/ one of Locke's favorite words: "disenfeeble"??  :-)

Let me say, too, that this discussion is healthy and fun, but I am very
aware of how important these words have been in my own professional
development as I come to know more about our profession.  I think the
beauty of our language is that we *can* use it with more and more
precision, and, as in the case of intertextuality (ooooh, 'nother such
word!), we can learn the "shades" of meaning from different contexts.  I
think we find words problematic when these shades of contextual meaning
become so diffuse that we no longer have boundaries for the
meaning--they've become so flexible that they've ceased to mean much of
anything.  Of course, this doesn't happen for everyone, nor does it happen
at the same time.  The wonder of it all is that we can "reclaim" words, run
them through the cycle of meaning again.  Ain't language/literacy grand?

--Becky