PAGE IN PROGRESS What you see here is a page of my hypertext book POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power. Initially empty, this page will slowly be filled with thoughts, notes, and quotes. One day, I will use them to write a coherent entry, similar to these completed pages. Thank you for your interest and patience!
Language can confuse us but it can also give us important insights, if we know how to ask. We should not treat language as merely labels that people put on things in order to be able to talk about the world. Language hides assumptions, values, beliefs. People name what they want to talk about and in a way that they want to talk about it. That’s why many words cannot be translated from one language to another language exactly. The less literal things we want to talk about, the more difficult it is to find a translation that effectively conveys the meaning from one language to another.
For example, when I was translating into English a poem that I wrote many years ago in Russian, I was confronted by the challenging of choosing an adjective that would convey the meaning of the word “зыбкий” (pronounced “zYbkiy,” with the stress on the capitalized letter). Depending on the context, it can be translated into English as “fragile”, “shaky,” “unsteady,” “unstable,” “loose,” and “wobbly.” And if you look at examples of translation involving this word, you will see that it can be also rendered as “delicate,” “faint,” “elusive,” and “ambiguous,” and “untrusty.” Clearly, there is no one word in English that conveys all the meanings of “зыбкий.” And I do not know how to explain that this word even appeared in Russian. What cultural needs was it serving? What assumptions, values, and beliefs was it hiding?
That does not mean that all words in a given language are as difficult to translate. Some words describe things that are more specific, something that can be observed in many different cultures—for example, “dog” or “table.” These words are easily translated in a specific context, for example, “I walk my dog every morning.” (This is not to say that these words don’t have subordinate meanings that differ between cultures. For example, in some cultures “dog” can be used to refer to an unpleasant, worthless person.)
It appears that words can tell us something about meaning shared by people in different cultures and communities. There is a basic literal meaning of “dog” shared in different cultures because dogs are domesticated animals that can be found around the world; they have played an important role in human civilizations since the time when these animals were domesticated thousands of years ago (precise time is a matter of debate among scholars).
If a word to describe a certain phenomenon exists in many different culture, we can argue that this is something important for people as a species. Which does not mean that this something is understood exactly the same by people in different cultures or subcultures. Take, for example, such word as “love,” which does have many different meaning and nuances (e.g., some languages have move words for “love” than others) but is present in many different cultures around the word. Clearly, love—in its many shapes and forms—is essential in lives of human beings.
The topic of this book is power. So, I wondered: Does word whose meanings are somewhat similar to “power” in English exist in other cultures. And if there are some differences, what are the nuances?
Linguists divide languages into “families.” Languages that belong to the same family share a common language ancestor, which linguists call “proto-language” of that particular family. This relationship is not straightforward: a family of languages can belong to another family. For example, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese (and a few other languages) belong to a language family known as “Romance languages.” But this family itself is part of the larger Indo-European family of languages, which includes many other languages native to Europe and South Asia.
The Indo-European family includes such diverse languages as English, Spanish, Russian, and Hindustani! This does not mean that the modern forms of these languages are similar, but some precious remnants of their commonality can be occasionally discovered. For example, I was really surprised when I realized, many years ago, that the Russian word “будить” (“budIt”), which means “to wake up,” is related to “Buddha,” which can be translated from Sanskrit as “awakened,” in the sense of “enlightened.”
Dividing languages into families is a tricky business. Some languages contain similar words because they have borrowed them from each other. This is not the same as having the same language ancestor. Some scholars say that there are close to 150 language families, others count several hundreds. This is not a linguistic book, and I am not a linguist. So, I won’t be able to dive into all the language families (and definitely not into all the living human languages, of which there are thousands) to explore “power” in all of them.
I can firsthand look into “power” in English, Russian, Spanish, German, and French. Of these languages, Spanish and France belong to Romance family, German and English belong to Germanic family, and Russian belongs to the Balto-Slavic family—and all these three families are different branches of the Indo-European family that I already mentioned. I will also take a look into a few other languages with a help of friends who speak them: Turkish, which belongs the Turkic family; Chinese, which belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family; Hebrew, which belongs to the Northwest Semitic family. I will also take a look into Sanskrit, although I do not know anybody who speaks it; I want to include it because the Indian cultural and philosophical tradition is particularly important for me.
Let’s start English, since this book is written in it. I will then discuss how the word “power” translates into other languages. Here are some of the meanings of “power” in English that we learn when we open Merriam-Webster (I am using its online version). The list of definitions is going to be long. I will go ahead and bold some key words that appear in these definitions and, I believe, can help us better understand the meaning of “power” in English. If you don’t want to read all the length definitions, just take a note of all the words I bolded and skip to the list of the main concepts that I have extracted from the definitions.
So, power can be understood as “ability to act or produce an effect,” “legal or official authority, capacity, or right,” “possession of control, authority, or influence over others” (also “one having such power—specifically: a sovereign state”), “a controlling group,” “a force of armed men” (archaic), “physical might,” “mental or moral efficacy,” “political control or influence.”
These are all meanings related to people and their relationships—what I will call in this book “social power.” However, there are also meanings not related to social power, and they are also worth mentioning: “an order of angels,” “the number of times as indicated by an exponent that a number occurs as a factor” and “the product itself,” “cardinal number” (in one of its meanings), “a source or means of supplying energy” (especially “electricity”), “motive power” (which applies to motion in machinery), “the time rate at which work is done or energy emitted or transferred,” “magnification” (in one of its meanings), “scope” (in some of its meanings, and “the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis in a statistical test when a particular alternative hypothesis happens to be true.”
“Power” can also be a verb and an adjective! As a verb, it can mean “to supply with power and especially motive power,” “to give impetus to,” “to move about by means of motive power,” and “to move with great speed or force.” As an adjective, it can mean “operated mechanically or electrically rather than manually,” “of, relating to, or utilizing strength,” and “having prestige, or influence.”
Here are the words that I bolded: ability, effect, authority, capacity, right, control, influence, force, might, energy, impetus, strength. I took some of these words from the definitions not related to social power because I believe that these concepts can be used to describe people and their relationships. I would throw in dominance as well, although it was not present in the Merriam-Webster list of definitions.
First of all, what this lengthy list suggests (in my opinion) is that “power” is seen as something important in people’s lives. If it wasn’t important, it’s definition would be short a specific. But look at this scope!
sometimes language can help, give hints to understand power but sometimes it can throw me off. For example, I find myself wanting to use all the time phrases with “can” and “be able to” that may or may not refer to power as aspects of social relations.
On this page, I explore "power" from the linguistic point of view. This word has become very special for me, because I have been thinking about it a lot. To begin with, my relationship with languages needs to be clarified. My mother tongue is Russian. I can also communicate in English, Spanish, French and German. My talent and love for languages may be explained by my synesthesia, which, according to WebMD is "a fancy name for when you experience one of your senses through another" (see My synesthetic perception of "power"). In French and Spanish the noun meaning power is the same word as the word meaning can. That is pouvoir in French and poder in Spanish. The origin of the English word power can be traced back to Anglo-Norman French poeir, from an alteration of Latin posse "be able".
Spanish: use of subjunctive to express influence: subjunctive triggers of influence - querer, preferir, insistir en, mandar, permitir, prohibir, desear, pedir, recomendar, sugerir, es necesario, es urgente, es importante, es mejor + QUE + SUBJUNCTIVE
Look at Megan Perry's Alfraed Grammaticus when published: In old English, different words were used for "may", "am able to" and "know how to". Nowadays they are all translated to the modern English as "can"
Can = may, am able to, know how to
English-language understanding of power prevail in the current academic conversations about power. Compare with Hindi: "The Sanskrit word shakti (शक्ति) translates to "power" in English. In Hindu philosophy and theology, shakti is a concept that refers to:
The active dimension of the godhead
The divine power that allows the godhead to create the world and display itself
The dynamic energy of a Hindu god, personified as his female consort
The primordial cosmic energy that is thought to move through the universe
Shakti is often associated with the feminine and with Hindu goddesses, who are seen as visible personifications of the intangible shakti. In the Tantric model, shakti is said to bring healing and enlightenment to the god Shiva"
About Shakti on Kripalu website: https://kripalu.org/resources/shakti-power-within-you#:~:text=Shakti%20means%20power%2C%20energy%2C%20or,are%20all%20forms%20of%20Shakti.
chinese? [ask Zoey]
Hebrew? [ask Tal]
Greek? "What is a Greek word for power? Four different Greek words are used in the Bible to represent the English word power. Of those words, dunamis is the most prevalent. Dunamis is used 117 times in the New Testament and has a distinct meaning apart from the other three power words. Dunamis represents the kind of power that is an inherent force."