Opposition word

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Opposition word is a term from ancient philological language research. It says that opposing word meanings are contained in a term. Opposition words are synonymous with original words . Antonyms each contain only one of two opposing meanings such as B. the word pair ›hot‹ and ›cold‹. Opposition words, on the other hand, have two opposite meanings in a single term.

Examples

In the oldest languages ​​there are original words that contain opposing meanings,

  1. so z. B. ancient Greek λὁγος (logos) = ›appreciation‹, ›reason‹ - but also - ›empty talk‹, ›gossip‹.
  2. or z. B. Latin sacer = ›holy‹, ›consecrated‹ - but also - ›wicked‹, ›abhorrent‹.

Ad 1) Michel Foucault understands the history of madness and its exclusion in the age of reason as a concern of his socially critical portrayal. He tries to relativize this exclusion and demarcation insofar as he represents a reflection on the social conditions of the demarcation of reason and insanity and the interests involved. Foucault writes:

“ One must try to rediscover in history that point zero in the history of madness at which madness is still an undifferentiated experience, an experience not yet split by a separation. "

This concern was already taken up in antiquity by balancing hubris and Sophrosyne and represented by the theses of Thrasymachus and Callicles .

Ad 2) Freud interprets the opposite meanings of an opposition word in his treatise on Moses as an expression of ambivalence . This shows the importance of affectivity , which implies the impossibility of a rational justification. The pejorative meaning of the Latin word ›sacer‹ is contained in the winged quote ›auri sacra fames‹ by Virgil - the accursed hunger for gold! The German meaning of the word holy also includes the pejorative meaning, for example in expressions such as ›holy disorder‹, ›holy metal sheet‹ etc.

reception

Sigmund Freud pointed out the importance of the original words in his work The Interpretation of Dreams . The dream often presents itself in opposing alternatives, which Freud saw as an expression of the primary process . Jürgen Habermas , in his essay The Universality Claim of Hermeneutics , gives a lecture on these statements by Freud and places them in the results of linguistic research and the interpretation of paleosymbols. He suspects that the ambivalence of attitudes is the cause of the origin of original words and therefore also plays a role in speech pathology . With certain forms of poor language development, the separation of the public and private world is z. Partly not yet clearly pronounced ( adualism ). The development of the original words described by Carl Abel into antonyms thus corresponds to the psychological development from primary-process thinking to thinking according to aspects of the secondary process , see → Basic Psychogenetic Law . Wolfgang Loch confirms that, from a genetic point of view, one of the essential characteristics of language is that the clearly defined meaning of a word is ultimately formed. This meaning is a late result of the secondary process. In the early stages of ontogenesis, the primary processes tend to have a more " extensional " character. Erich Fromm describes the unity of the opposites contained in it as paradoxical logic . The development of the opposition words towards antonyms should therefore be viewed as dualism or as an expression of the influence of the Aristotelian laws of thought .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Duden-online
  2. ↑ a b Abel, Carl : The contradiction of the original words . 1884
  3. ↑ Heidegger, Martin : Being and time . [1926] - Max Niemeyer-Verlag, Tübingen 1979, ISBN 3-484-70122-6 , page 33, lines 12-21
  4. ↑ Freud, Sigmund : The man Moses and the monotheistic religion . (1939) Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2010; ISBN 978-3-15-018721-0 ; After the page number, the line number is shown separated by an asterisk (*); Page 149 * 18
  5. ↑ Foucault, Michel : madness and society . (Histoire de la folie. Paris, 1961) A story of madness in the age of reason. Suhrkamp, ​​stw 39, 1973, ISBN 978-3-518-27639-6 ; Page 7 ff.
  6. ↑ Virgil, Aeneis 3, 56 f .: ›quid non mortalia pectora cogis, auri sacra fames‹ "Why don't you drive people's hearts, accursed hunger for gold!"
  7. ↑ Freud, Sigmund : The Interpretation of Dreams . [1900] Collected Works, Volume II / III, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / M, reference: paperback edition of the Fischer library, Aug. 1966, chap. VI. The dream work, par. C. The means of representation of the dream. Page 265 f.
  8. ↑ Habermas, Jürgen : The universality claim of hermeneutics (1970). In: On the logic of social sciences, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Wissenschaft 517, Frankfurt 5 1982, pages 345, 352
  9. ^ Gehlen, Arnold : Urmensch und Spätkultur . Frankfurt 1964
  10. ^ Diamond, AS: The History and Origin of Language . London 1959
  11. ↑ Loch, Wolfgang : On the theory, technology and therapy of psychoanalysis . S. Fischer Conditio humana (edited by Thure von Uexküll & Ilse Grubrich-Simitis 1972), ISBN 3-10-844801-3 , page 59
  12. ↑ Fromm, Erich : The art of loving . (1956) Ullstein Frankfurt 1984, Book No. 35258; Page 88