As time goes on and the disciplines continue to develop, the English language changes according to the trends of the generation. When one subject starts to become the dominant discipline, said subject starts to effect what certain words mean and how they are used. Moran’s, Interdisciplinarity, states, “The obvious connections between the subjects, however, have not always encouraged co-operation; they have often led to greater territoriality, as each subject has sought to consolidate its own separateness and uniqueness.” (Page 103). Once subjects start to be seen as the prominent discipline of the time, it uses its hold over society’s word usage and phrases and change them to what they want them to mean. This can be seen by the many dictionaries that provide multiple meanings for each word. For instance, Dictionary.com provides multiple definitions for words and links them to the various disciplines that said definitions would be applied to. The website gives the word, “angle” many meanings that apply to various subjects such as: geometry, journalism, photography, medicine, various sciences, and even provides a slang definition. Over the years, many words have been adapted to the various subjects and altered to suit their needs. The geometric definition of “angle” according to Dictionary.com is defined as, “the space within two lines or three or more planes diverging from a common point, or within two planes diverging from a common line.” ; meanwhile, the journalistic definition is defined as an “the point of view from which copy is written, especially when the copy is intended to interest a particular audience“. The word angle has been adapted to these different disciplines to fit the needs of the subjects.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, many subjects trod upon others, such as the sciences upon English, in order to feel a sense of superiority; however, they all have had their own effects on the usage of English. Words are fought over by these subjects as shown by these discipline dependent definitions in Dictionary.com. People may see English as a “teachers discipline”, however, they seem to forget that they fight over how it is used and how without it, they cannot even make use of their own subject. When they take words and redefine it to meet their needs, they are fighting over a discipline which they continue to mock.
By giving multiple meanings to the same words, this can be seen as going against interdisciplinarity. If interdisciplinarity is the interaction between or with other disciplines, both directly or indirectly, then fighting between the disciplines can be seen as both interdisciplinarity and not being interdisciplinarity. They are interacting with each other, however, they are neither arguing for nor against a certain topic. They are taking a certain topic and adapting it in a way where no matter how it is changed, it is still technically correct within the territory of the discipline. The subjects interact by using the same words, but they alter it to the point where each definition is almost entirely different when compared to the same word in another disciplne. This drastic alteration is where the non-interdisciplinarity of the subjects is shown. Only when you can see the origin of these words does the interdisciplinarity between the subjects show itself. Vocabulary is fractured into territories between the disciplines, however, they all overlap at the original word definition. Vocabulary is both interdisciplinarity and not interdisciplinarity for it is fragmented interdisiplinarity; it both shows the interaction and isolation of the disciplines.