glossary of terms

This glossary indexes technical terminology that I have devised as well as idiosyncratic expressions that may need to be contextualised in order to be understood.


'Andor'
'And/or' but without the slash. I often use this to make a point about the way language is not static. English does not have a word for this concept, so I made one out of 'and/or'. It's more a statement than an actual belief that it should become a word, though.

Introduced in 'Grand designs of my own' on my travel blog, 'Ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted'.





'Argumentative stratum'
See 'Stratigraphy of argumentation'.




'Semantic decay'
The evaporation of the feeling, meaning or meaningfulness out of a phenomenon, often through repetition, or repeated exposure to that phenomenon.

Introduced in ''Naturalness', semantic decay, anthropocentrism, hierarchy and veg(etari)anism'.




'Stratigraphy of argumentation'
A theoretical model used to depict chronological changes in social consensus in order to place new positions which challenge those consensuses in relation to them. Essentially the Hegelian dialectic.

Introduced in 'Positions on political correctness: towards a stratigraphical model of argumentation'.






'Tintin('s purgatory)'
Tintin is my battered, European-travel-worn laptop, so named for its metallic chassis (my old mobile phone, which also had a metallic case, was called Snowy). Tintin's purgatory, then, is where half-finished essays, reviews, articles and commentaries languish on my hard drive, waiting for something to happen in the world to act as a catalyst and call them into being so that they can be turned into blog posts.


Introduced in 'The urgency of nonfiction'.




'Traipse through canon'
How I refer to my goal of progressing through the major works of literary canon from The Epic of Gilgamesh up until contemporary writing, in a vaguely chronological order.

Introduced in 'Traipsing through canon'.