Week 2 Blog Assignment: 4 Terms

In each discipline, and really in any human endeavor that involves a closed group, the members develop an internal language that has specific meanings and implications for them and either very different, or sometimes little or no meanings for those outside the group.  Even common words or expressions can take on new meanings within a group.

Your blog post should have two parts:

1. What are three of your favorite words or terms from the 'secret language' of your discipline or your own personal practice., and why are you drawn to them, or why are they important to your discipline? Help the rest of the class by explaining what they mean to you, to your discipline, and why they are significant.

2. Conversely, people outside of the group can tend to reduce the inherent richness and diversity of a discipline by using an unfair condensation of one or two words to describe the totality of the group, or by misusing or misunderstanding these terms.  What is the outsider description of your discipline, or a term that people use to describe your discipline that you find to be most inaccurate, reductionist or plain wrong?