Talk:Ideograph (rhetoric)

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But what does an ideoghraph look like? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.54.140.142 (talk • contribs) 21:25, 29 January 2009

Coined by...?
Sorry, I'm reading Ida Pruitt's Daughter of Han, and the index and the text refers to ideographs of Confucian ideals of fate. The term is used similarly to the way it is described in this article, and Pruitt published her book in 1945. The coinage of this word, whatever its theoretical development, must postdate 1980.184.77.32.182 (talk) 13:42, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't think so. The use in that book is connected to the more specific and concrete definition of ideograph as a language symbol (such as in Egyptian hieroglyphics or, in this case, Chinese writing). This article refers to a separate definition of the word. --Tremington (talk) 19:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Glittering generality and this article read a lot alike, even using many of the same examples. To the extent that there's a difference, it looks like an ideograph can also be negative ("terms that do not have a clear definition but are used to give the impression of a clear meaning" versus "emotionally appealing words... that... carry conviction without supporting information or reason"), but the basic concepts are so closely related that separate articles are unnecessary. I notice that virtue word has already been merged (really only redirected) here. To determine the more common term, Google searches are tricky with this term since there's also the linguistic ideograph, but any way I search for it, this term ends up more common than "glittering generality," which seems to have just been a memorable reference to such words in political discourse. --BDD (talk) 21:03, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Response
While there are some similarities, "glittering generality" and "ideograph" are not synonymous and merging these would do violence to both concepts. "Glittering generality" refers to the use of vaguely positive words in a way that is meant to be overtly manipulative or misleading (it is often included in lists of basic argumentative fallacies).

"Ideograph" is a more subtle idea, suggesting that concepts such as "justice" or "liberty" are inherently abstract and are always rhetorical constructions that can change over time and across societies. Tremington (talk) 15:27, 19 March 2013 (UTC)