Glossary
The impact of advertising on young people
- Denotation
- the relationship between a word and its literal associations (its dictionary definition) e.g. December = the twelfth month of the year.
- Connotation
- the relationship between a word and its emotional (personal or communal) associations e.g. December = dark evenings, Christmas, parties.
The use of animals in medical research
- Morally indefensible
- something that cannot be defended from a moral or ethical standpoint as generally understood by a society.
- CEO
- chief executive officer, the head of an organisation who runs it on a day-to-day basis.
- Bioscience
- the sciences of living organisms such as biology and medicine.
- Vivisection
- the act of operating on living animals for the purpose of scientific research.
- AMRC
- Association of Medical Research Charities, a membership organisation of the leading UK charities that fund medical and health research.
- Epidemiological
- relating to the study of diseases in populations.
- Primate
- an animal belonging to the Order of animals called primates which includes man, monkeys and lemurs.
- Genome
- an organism's genetic material as contained in its chromosomes.
- Activist
- a person who uses direct or militant action with the aim of achieving a political or social goal, in this case to stop the use of animals in medical research.
- Hunt sabbing
- sabotaging a hunt, i.e. disrupting it by deliberate action, peaceful or otherwise.
- Broadsheet
- newspapers printed on large sheets of paper which offer in-depth coverage of events.
- Tabloid
- newspapers of small format or size with a condensed and often sensationalist coverage of events.
Freedom of information
- Presentational devices
- devices used in the presentation of information, such as visual style, type size and general design of graphic elements.
- Corporate
- relating to a business corporation or company, usually a large one.
- Civil liberties
- the basic freedoms of people in a society protected by its laws, for example, freedom of speech and religious expression.
- Constitutional
- relating to a constitution, i.e. the fundamental principals by which a state or country is governed.
- Statutory rights
- rights defined by law in a state's statute book.
- Litigate
- to seek to settle a dispute in court according to the law.
Designer babies
- Genetic engineering
- altering or otherwise determining an organism's genetic structure.
- Cloning
- creating genetically identical copies of living organisms.
- Embryo
- an animal at a very early stage of development before it becomes recognisable as a foetus. In humans this is the first 8 weeks of life following fertilisation of the egg.
- Commodity
- an item that is useful and that can or could be traded, bought or sold.
- Slippery slope
- a metaphor for a situation or process that once started cannot be stopped and that generally leads to disaster.
- Continuum
- a smooth succession or order from one point to another.
- Non-verbal signs
- physical or behavioural signs that communicate meaning but that do not involve speech.
- Semantic field
- often found in rhetorical speaking, this is when words associated with, or clustering around a particular area, are used strategically to give a particular flavour or tone. For example, a politician may use battle imagery several times during a speech to give the speech a war-like tone.
- Rhetorical device
- a technique used in writing or speaking to get a reader or listener's attention, for instance the choice of words or structure of sentences.
Homelessness and begging
- Counterblast
- a strongly worded response.
- Shell suits
- lightweight nylon jogging suits that were briefly fashionable in the 1980s (see Del Boy in 'Only Fools & Horses' television series).
- Taboo
- something forbidden by social custom.
- Uriah Heep
- a character in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield who pretends to be humble in order to get his own way.
- Liberal guilt
- guilt felt by those who can afford to be liberal minded.
- Compassion fatigue
- when someone's compassion gets tired in the face of repeated exposure to situations which demand it.
The origin of life
- Darwin
- a British naturalist whose work The Origin of the Species first put forward the theory of evolution as a scientific and biological process.
- Secular
- not religious
- Creationists
- those who believe that the world was created by a supreme being or deity and reject Darwin’s theory of evolution.
- Darwinists
- those who believe and support Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
- Double helix
- a description of the twisted ladder shape of DNA.
- Mutation
- a change in the base-pair sequence of DNA or RNA.
- Selective breeding
- the selection of individuals of a species with particular traits for breeding purposes to ensure those traits are carried through to the next generation.
- Crux
- the most important argument on which the theory is based.
- Travesty
- a mockery of the real issue.
- Creation myth
- a story to describe the beginning of the world or universe which can be specific to different cultural and/ or religious groups.
- Intelligent design
- the theory that the world was created by an intelligent entity or designer rather than by natural selection or evolution.
- Discovery Institute
- American organisation whose stated mission is to ‘make a positive vision of the future practical’. The Institute is one of the main promoters of Intelligent Design.
- Irreducible Complexity
- shorthand for the idea which considers that the scientific theory that life evolved through biological evolution by natural selection alone is incomplete or flawed, and that some additional mechanism is required to explain the origins of life.
- Speciation
- the development of new species through the process of natural selection.
- Atheism
- a belief that there are no gods of any denomination.
- Monotheism
- the belief that there is only one God or supreme deity.
- Abiogenesis
- the theory that living things developed from non-living matter.
- Chromosomes
- a chromosome is a single large piece of DNA. Plant and animal cells store all their genetic information in a number of chromosomes inside the nucleus.
- Photomicrography
- a system of attaching a camera to a microscope to take photographs of the material being examined. Also known as Photomicroscopy.
- Karyotype
- A photo of an individual’s chromosomes arranged according to size and type.
- Hominid
- any family of two legged primates. Humans belong to this family.
- Ethological
- behavioural rather than biological.
- Anthropocentric
- human-centred – the idea that human beings are the most important beings of the universe.
- Empirical
- based on observation and experiment rather than theory.
