Plastic Words
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Plastic Words
"Development". "Project". "Strategy". "Problem". These words are examples of what German writer and linguist Uwe Poerksen calls "plastic words" because of their malleability and the uncanny way they are used to fit every circumstance. All told, they probably number no more than thirty or forty, but their usage is widespread. At first they seem marvelously versatile, but in reality they are slippery and elusive, making it impossible to pin down their meaning. And therefore, Poerksen suggests, they are dangerous. According to Poerksen, plastic words began as scientific terms with highly specialized meanings. Many had been imported to the sciences from the vernacular languages of English, German, Spanish, and French, but he finds that in recent decades they have migrated back into the vernacular - stripped of their specialized meanings. They displace more precise words with words that sound scientific but actually blur meaning and disable common language. In the mouths of society's experts - politicians, professors, corporate officials - they become the building blocks for plans and solutions that may seem utopian but that end up impoverishing the world. Plastic Words is a translation of the remarkably successful book first published in Germany in 1988. For the English-language edition, Poerksen has added a new preface, explaining the origin of the book and addressing the spirited public debate it has spawned.
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Sacred Modes of Being in a Postsecular World
Author: Andrew W. Hass
language: en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date: 2021-09-16
How do we talk meaningfully about the sacred in contexts where conventional religious expression has so often lost its power? Inspired by the influential work of David Jasper, this important volume builds on his thinking to identify sacrality in a world where the old religious and secular debates have exhausted themselves and theology struggles for a new language in their wake. Distinguished writers explore here the idea of the sacred as one that exists, paradoxically, in a space that is both possible and impossible: profoundly theological on the one hand, but also deeply this-worldly and irreligious on the other. This is a sacredness that is simultaneously 'present' and 'absent': one which encompasses – as Jasper himself characterises it – 'the impossible possibility of an absolute vision'. The book teaches us that the sacred assumes a renewed potency when fully engaged with the creativity that happens across religion, literature, philosophy and the arts.