Magazine

A Rose by Any Other Name , by Peter J. Murray

A rose by any other name

Those familiar with Umberto Eco's work will recognize the ironic allusion I use here. For those who are not familiar, it goes something like this--the phrase a rose by any other name would smell as sweet means, it doesn't matter what you call it, it's still the same thing. I use this ironically in the title, because the main element of my argument is that it does matter what you call something, or what you mean by the use of a particular word or phrase; one of the problems in relation to CMC is that people have frequently used the term CMC to mean different things.

Umberto Eco is a both an Italian academic, who has done much work in the area of semiotics (the study of the meaning and interpretation of symbols) and an author of fiction; one of his best-known works is The Name of the Rose.