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Jurisprudence Commons

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Jurisprudence

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University of Pittsburgh School of Law

2005

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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

The Ten Commandments As Secular Historic Artifact Or Sacred Religious Text: Using Modrovich V. Allegheny County To Illustrate How Words Create Reality, Ann N. Sinsheimer Jan 2005

The Ten Commandments As Secular Historic Artifact Or Sacred Religious Text: Using Modrovich V. Allegheny County To Illustrate How Words Create Reality, Ann N. Sinsheimer

Articles

In his essay, The 'Ideograph: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology', Michael Calvin McGee proposes that our system of beliefs is shaped through and expressed by words. We are consciously and unconsciously conditioned and controlled by the words we hear and use. Words carry ideology and convey and create meaning. Like Chinese characters, words are 'ideographs that 'signify' and 'contain' a unique ideological commitment', that is frequently unquestioned. McGee also suggests that by understanding that a single word can carry ideology and that ideology can be expressed in a single word, we are better able to expose and evaluate ideology …