When Words do not Live up to their Claims – ‘Grelling’s Paradox’
Kurt Grelling (1886-1942) showed the type of paradox that semantics can generate.
By example, some words exhibit the properties they refer to - thus ‘short’ is a short word. Others do not - ‘long’ is not a long word – and we can call such words ‘heterological’.
Now ask whether ‘heterological’ is heterological. If it is, then it is a word that does not exhibit the property it refers to, so it is not heterological (the property it refers to) after all.
If it is not heterological, then it is a word that does not exhibit the property it refers to, so it fits the definition of ‘heterological’, so it is heterological. If it is, it isn’t, and if it isn’t, it is.
There is the paradox.
Here the veracity of language, our chief tool, for the defining of our ‘selves’ is challenged.
Language is a process which arises out of an awareness of differences and such differences themselves mainly arise within a larger classificatory context, through unconscious processes pre-formed by linguistic categories, rather than through conscious processes performing rational procedures.
Language does not have an invariant core, its only core, if you can call it that, is difference and difference is not a thing, it is not substantive. But no one will tell the powers that be in education that the snag with difference it cannot be reified, it is relational and therefore it does not exist in space or time.
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