Western lexicography assumes words are naturally clear and univocal

Evidence

There are two assumptions that govern this approach to language, neither of them fully shared by Urabi or his contemporaries. The first is that the proper nature of words is to be clear, stable and univocal, and that a word acquires more power the closer it comes to this ideal. The second is that the study of words is the study of some larger abstraction for which they stand – the political mind or culture or meaning of a certain community. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 436

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the two tacit assumptions of the Western approach to language (univocity, and words-as-stand-ins-for-abstractions) — contrasted with Urabi/Marsafi’s practice.
• XREF: Directly relevant to Mitchell’s ongoing contrast between ‘modern’ representation (copy/ideal) and premodern practice; also resonates with Wittgenstein’s critique of language as picture. — connects to: Classical translations routinely distort meaning through culturally specific terms — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1600; Western science vocabulary defines the boundaries of what it can know — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 176; Indigenous languages encoded moss distinctions that English collapses into one word — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 423