Cross-Cultural Linguistics for Equal Dignity (CCLEQ)

•  Thomas Clough Daffern, Director and Coordinator
Director, International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy, Wales and London, UK

 

•  Francisco Gomes de Matos, Director and Coordinator
An Applied Peace Linguist, Recife, Brazil, E-mail fcgm@hotlink.com.br, currently also a Consultant to Associação Brasil América, a Binational Center

HumanDHS is primarily grounded in academic work. We are independent of any religious or political agenda. However, we wish to bring academic work into "real life." Our research focuses on topics such as dignity (with humiliation as its violation), or, more precisely, on respect for equal dignity for all human beings in the world. This is not only our research topic, but also our core value, in line with Article 1 of the Human Rights Declaration that states that every human being is born with equal dignity (that ought not be humiliated). We agree with Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, who advocates the building of bridges from academia as follows, "I have always believed that good scholarship can be relevant and consequential for public policy. It is possible to affect public policy without being an advocate; to be passionate about peace without losing analytical rigor; to be moved by what is just while conceding that no one has a monopoly on justice." We would like to add that we believe that good scholarship can be relevant and consequential not only for public policy, but for raising awareness in general.

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Links

Francisco Gomes de Matos:
One of the serious gaps in the preparation of researchers is TERMINOLOGY SCIENCE. Since we deal with concepts-terms, we should be minimally knowledgeable about the form-meaning-use of terms in our specific areas! FREQUENCY, too, is important (the DICTIONARIES OF FREQUENCY are being published, see the Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary American English, by Mark Davies and Dee Gardner, published by Routledge, 2010, and, also by the same publisher, Frequency Dictionary of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.)

When the words injustice and indignity entered written English:
Justice made itself visible in English from 1175
Injustice entered written English from 1350 (Humiliation, too!)
Dignity was born visually in English from 1150
Indignity made its written debut from 1575
- Francisco Gomes de Matos, 15th January 2011. His source: The Random House Webster's College Dictionary, 1997. Published by Random House, New York.
...
Mercy - 1120; Pity - 1175; Compassion -1300; Humaneness - 1500; Sympathy - 1560; Commiseration - 1585.
- Francisco Gomes de Matos, 24th March 2011.
...
Self-worth was coined in 1960, self-respect appeared in writing from 1650, self-regard 1585.
- Francisco Gomes de Matos, 16th July 2011.

Let´s never harm
Let´s never hate
Let´s never hurt
Let´s never humiliate!
- Francisco Gomes de Matos, 11th January 2011

Everybody let's respect
and Dignity we'll perfect
- Francisco Gomes de Matos, 7th February 2011

As the concept of EQUALITY is central to DEMOCRACY,
so the concept of  DIGNITY is central to HUMANITY.
As the concept of SOLIDARITY is central to SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY,
so the concept of HUMILITY is central to TRANQUILITY
- Francisco Gomes de Matos, 11th March 2011

The FDCAE says that DIGNITY is among the 5,000 most frequently used words in English.
•  The ADJECTIVES that cooccur with DIGNITY: human, great, personal, quiet, EQUAL, inherent
•  The VERBS most frequently used together with DIGNITY: treat, maintain, die, restore, lose, RESPECT, preserve, uphold, constitute
•  The NOUNS that collocate (hang out together with) DIGNITY: sense, RIGHT, person, honor, freedom, worth, grace, value, BEING
(Capitalization by Francisco Gomes de Matos)
- Francisco Gomes de Matos, 16th May 2011

10 Pillars of Human Knowledge by Chaim Zins
10 Pillars of Knowledge is a systematic map of human knowledge. It presents, at a glance, the structure of knowledge and the meaningful relations among the main fields. Human knowledge is composed of 10 pillars:
• Foundations
• Supernatural
• Matter and Energy
• Space and Earth
• Non-Human Organisms
• Body and Mind
• Society
• Thought and Art
• Technology
• History

Culturomics.org
This is a database of words as found in the 15 million books scanned for the Google Books project. On the website one can check how often a chosen word or phrase appears in that set of books. Here is an example for "human dignity."
- We thank Uli Spalthoff for making us aware of this project.

Google Labs
Type in a word or phrase in one of seven languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Russian, Chinese) and see how its usage frequency has been changing throughout the past few centuries.

The Tagalog term for "nonviolence," or alay dangal, means to "offer dignity"
- We thank Michael Nagler for making us aware of this connection! (The standardized form of Tagalog is commonly called Filipino.)

When the words injustice and indignity entered written English
Justice made itself visible in English from 1175
Injustice entered written English from 1350 (Humiliation, too!)
Dignity was born visually in English from 1150
Indignity made its written debut from 1575
- Francisco Gomes de Matos, 15th January 2011. His source: The Random House Webster's College Dictionary, 1997. Published by Random House, New York.
...
Mercy - 1120; Pity - 1175; Compassion -1300; Humaneness - 1500; Sympathy - 1560; Commiseration - 1585.
- Francisco Gomes de Matos, 24th March 2011.

Humiliation in Russian
Humiliation in Russian: унижение (uneejenije), or "making low" (Olga Botcharova, December 2006)

Japanese Expressions of Humiliation
Assembled by Midori Suzuki, Tokyo, 2004.

Universality of Humiliation
by Bill Templer (2006)
Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna
Bankrang village
Phitsanulok province, Thailand.

Cross-Cultural Linguistics
Thomas Clough Daffern works on cross-cultural linguistics. His work was first published in the Muses Journal, Issue 6, 1999. Please see also Appendix 5 in Thomas Daffern's PhD thesis: Multilingual Dictionary for Multifaith and Multicultural Mediation and Education

Comparative Analysis of the Philosophies of Enlightenment
Please see here other work by Thomas Clough Daffern:
Enlightenments: Towards a Comparative Analysis of the Philosophies of Enlightenment in Buddhist, Eastern and Western Thought and the Search for a Holistic Enlightenment Suitable for the Contemporary World
Paper prepared for the SOAS Buddhist Conference for Dongguk University on Global Ecological problems and the Buddhist Perspective, February 2005

International Institute for Peace Studies and Global Philosophy
Please see here the International Institute for Peace Studies and Global Philosophy (IIPSGP) Newsletter, Summer 2005 and Summer 2006 by Thomas Clough Daffern