> Catherine, you continue to baffle me utterly. The proposition that "an
> explanation comprises and/or infers a definition" is _either_ a
> tautology (and trivial one) _or_ it is litgeral non-sense. An
> explanation is expressed in words, and a definition describes the
> historical usage of words, hence the explanation is not intelligible
> unless the definition of the words it which it is expressed are clear.
>
> If she means something else than this trivial tautology, she will have
> to explain it before I could possibly respond very substantively to this
> post. I insert a few tentative observations below only to provide clues
> to what my problem of understanding is.
i'll try --
when you explain some act/threat of terrorism you imply a definition of it (what should be understood by the label terrorism)
such "explanations" are never neutral, of course, and the way in which they constitute a definition of the concept/term/category has force, making it more likely other things will be thought or not thought terrorism
a definition is not just a description of the historical usage of words. that would be far less important. definitions are constantly under negotiation and subject to a range of hey... power relations! a definition has the power, for example, to place some acts of violence as "terrorism", and thus able to be understood and acted upon as such, and to place other acts in different ways -- say "peacekeeping" or "war"
to put the same thing another way:
explanations -- for eg. of how this or that terrorist act came about, deploy definitions, which is one of the ways in which the media is so powerful
definitions -- state what is true/untrue possible/impossible under a given term/concept
explanations -- constitute, imply, flesh out, and enforce definitions
definitions -- naturalise/institutionalise certain explanations
does that make any more sense? maybe i should have chosen a less emotive example, but i'm still moving and blunt seems best.
maybe i am saying they're part of the same field of language use, but not in a tautological sense because they're rhetorically different. and certainly not in a trivial sense.
catherine