Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Myth-understanding
I'm celebrating my first post by getting up on my shiny new virtual soapbox to tell everyone I can reach how much it annoys me that the newspapers, television and radio news programs and news magazines continue to use the word "myth" to identify something as untrue or mistaken. The term "myth" refers to a sacred narrative that explains the origin of something. The current edition of Brown and Rosenberg's Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature backs me up on this (p. 431). Interns who check facts for the various media, please take a moment to use a thesaurus and find a more appropriate term.
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2 comments:
This bothers me too, when people use "myth" when they mean "misconception," or worse, "untruth."
I never really thought about it, but you are absolutely correct!! This is one of the things that I appreciate so much about you...you have this lovely ability to challenge me to think about things that I would never have noticed or to think in a in a totally new way. The blog is beautiful!
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