This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference.
Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump.

"Homophora is reference that depends on cultural knowledge or other general knowledge, rather than on specific features of a particular context." [1]

Words and phrases with extralinguistic meaning such as rich points in language, idioms, and figures of speech, can all cause confusion when used as titles or within an article when read by a non-native speaker or someone not familiar with the culture. Conversely, stripping homophora of their extralinguistic meaning can also cause confusion for native speakers and those from the culture.

This problem arises especially in:

Article titles
Definitions in introductions
Disambiguations
Quotations

As Wikipedia is language-specific, homophora are interpreted within the language, Wikipedia should strive to be readable by speakers of that language and the Wikipedia should not try to imitate a universal language.

This is somewhat similar to the guidelines regarding:

Also see this page's talk page for some insightful commentary.

Examples

For example, classical music is well understood in all pre-dominantly English-speaking cultures as referring to European classical music.

To someone outside English-speaking culture, classical music could well refer to their own consideration of what is "classical," as in an apex of the musical arts. However, an attempt to take literally/technically the culturally-rich word "classical" uproots it from its extralinguistic meaning and causes confusion for readers of the Wikipedia.

Other examples might be:

Homophora can cause problems even across cultures speaking the same language, especially when encountered in quotations--although most of the time the context is readily available.

Notice how, interpreted with cultural meaning, they exclude other possible interpretations. For example, the current Intelligent design page excludes people who are simply theists, who believe in an intelligent being who designed the universe and have no opinions on something like evolution. Tort reform excludes any other type of reform and furthermore characterizes the article that it is about, saying it is a "reform" when that is arguable. Objectivist philosophy is about Ayn Rand's philosophy, not metaphysical objectivism, though someone who considers themselves an objectivist may only be referring to metaphysical objectivism, not Ayn Rand's philosophy.

An example related to the proposed guideline regarding homophora, and which led to an Wikipedia:Requests For arbitration, is List of Disco artists (see the article history) in which two users argued about whether certain songs were to be included as Disco.

Usage guidelines

When to use and when not to

Editors should use homophora over literal description when the following conditions are met:

When the term or phrase is common interpretation in the language the Wikipedia is in; and
When the term or phrase is common interpretation across the majority of cultures speaking that language; and
When the term or phrase is historically common intrepretation in that language; and
When, if applicable, the term or phrase is in majority usage in the philosophical field it is used in (such as arts or science.); and
When the term or phrase is not slang; and
When the term or phrase passes the Google test.

If not all of the above conditions are met, a literal interpretation should be used instead.

If most of the above conditions are met, a literal interpretation may be used but must acknowledge the homophoric nature of the word or phrase.

Other possible usage guidelines may be that disambiguation must be provided when the following conditions are met:

When the term or phrase is contradictory, an oxymoron, or misnomer;
When the term or phrase subjectively characterizes itself.

(The following suggestions are close to Wikipedia:Explain jargon, but applied more in terms of Article titles and topics.)

Another possibility is sort of a "man-on-the-street test." I don't know if this would exactly be the test, but an example would be if you gave someone the topic and only the topic, and asked them to write a short description, what meaning would be the most common. For example, if you asked a random group of people to "Tell me what leverage is." would they write about levers or write about the corporate meaning of the word? And, when presented with everyone else's meanings would they be more or less inclined to say they have never heard the word or phrase used that way before. This is something to think about though, it's not really fully-formed idea. Just throwing things out there.
Another suggestion related to the above one might be "When the term or phrase is not peculiar to a subculture," for example, defining cult words like Scientology's Auditing (Scientology) at face value instead of identifying them as being peculiar to a subculture.
Another similar possibility is a "No TV test" which would be to ask whether an educated person who has not watched television, read newspapers or anything on the Internet would understand what the topic is when given simple context without getting confused. This would be a hard one to figure out too, again I'm just throwing ideas out.

Extra steps when using homophora

Editors should, if necessary and at their discretion, make the following attempts to clarify homophora:

Provide an explanation of the term and contrast it with the literal nature of the word or phrase.
If it is a title of an article, a link to a disambiguation page should be provided.

Quotation guidelines

Editors should, if necessary and at their discretion, make the following attempts to clarify homophora when they are encountered in quotations, if the homophora does not meet the above criteria:

Provide sufficient context; and/or
Provide an explanation of what the speaker/writer is referring to; and/or

Disclosure

While I created this proposal and hope to have discussion on this kind of policy, I should disclose that I have been involved with intense disputes on both the Global warming and Intelligent design pages regarding similar matters. The adoption of this policy would further my argument to separate those articles into component topics which, in my opinion, would reduce disputes and make the various involved subjects easier to understand. I also believe I have successfully dissolved what was an ongoing dispute on the Classical music page by adding an explanation of the homophoric nature of the phrase as part of the introduction. --Ben 09:40, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

References

Exophora