1.  Concept proposals evolve out of field experience -- anyone studying a problem is likely to discover situations, phenomena, processes, etc. which are novel -- they do not fit well into established categories of thought.  This has happened many times to me and, as a result, I have proposed a variety of new ideas -- at least, they seemed new to me because I had not encountered them before.  Efforts to find out whether or not they are new, however, a frustrating because no reference tools are available to help answer questions about whether or not anyone has ever had the same idea. Typically, all our tools, like dictionaries, indexes, encyclopedias, library catalogs and thesauri are arranged alphabetically, by key words.  These words presuppose the prior existence of the concepts they represent.  The only proof of a concept's novelty, therefore, is the fact that there is no word for it!  But how do you establish the point that no word exists for any idea you have in mind -- you certainly cannot "look it up."  Most of us rely on our own experience and have to say, perhaps unconvincingly, that after years of reading and teaching in a given field, we have not yet encountered a concept that, we think, is really useful.

Let me mention an example from the text of this paper.  When I speak of a "new concept," I do not really mean "new" in the ordinary sense of this word -- what I mean is "a concept that may be useful and can be described but still lacks an unequivocal term."  A term is "equivocal" if it can be understood as representing two or more ideas that are relevant in a particular context. I mentioned "mouse" as an unequivocal term for computer users, even though the word is a polyseme that already has other meanings -- it will not be ambiguous so long as it is not understood as a reference to a rodent or a timid person.  I have used new to refer to such concepts, but this involves assigning a new meaning to this word which ordinarily connotes recent appearance.  Since the word is polysemic and is now used for a dozen or so meanings, several of which are closely linked to the concept I need, it is at best a fuzzy term.  Among these, one is defined as "appearing for the first time, novel."  Some concepts attract so much attention that terms for them gain widespread acceptance, virtually overnight -- e.g. spree killer as a kind of "serial killer."

What I want to focus attention on is concepts that may even have been around for a long time, but we still lack suitable terms to designate them.  Sometimes this is simply because the words used to designate them are equivocal, having other meanings that block communication.  The distinguishing criterion of these concepts, therefore, is not so much that they have been developed recently (although most of them are, indeed, relatively recent) as that they have not yet acquired unequivocal terms.  A word that might serve our purposes better than "new" is mint in the sense of "unused condition" or "newly made."  To coin words is to "mint" them, and so, I think, we might more precisely use mint concepts to refer to concepts that have not yet been used and, therefore, lack accepted terms.  However, I shall use "mint" and "new" here as synonyms.

2. Concept Evaluations.  A "proposed" mint concept, however, can easily turn out to be a used coin if someone can show that the same idea has already entered our repertoire.  Accordingly, the second step proposed here involves circulating a proposal to see if any specialists in a given field have ever used or heard of it.  ETHNIC-L already gives us a resource that could be used for this purpose.  Anyone presenting a mint concept could distribute it to subscribers -- especially those managing listservs -- inviting anyone who has any knowledge of prior use of the concept to contact the presenter.  No doubt some evaluative procedures could be established but, after a reasonable process, we might be able to offer everyone on ETHNIC-L a record on our Terminology page certifying that, to the best of our knowledge, this is a mint concept.  Its status would always be subject to revision should anyone subsequently show that the concept is already in use and has a different term.

Whether or not a notion is truly a mint concept, however, is only one test -- perhaps a more important one is whether it is useful.  The basic test involves showing that it has been used to good effect in some context.  The most available would be a scholarly paper written by the presenter.  A text drawn from such a paper could be used as evidence. Taking advantage of the WWW, such a text should be available on a Web Page, and the presenter should both quote a passage from the paper to illustrate the use of the concept, and provide a URL to enable any reader to jump promptly to the full text and find the spot at which the concept has been introduced.  Offering several such context links would strengthen the case for accepting a mint concept.

When and if others use a mint concept, the case will be strengthened. ETHNIC-L can facilitate such usage by promoting discourse in which the proposed concept is used.  The presenter could take the lead by posting some propositions on one or more of the ETHNIC-L lists. Anyone using the mint concept in a scholarly paper could be urged to mention it in an abstract for the paper and list it among its key words.

3. Term Proposals.  Although mint concepts need to be identified by descriptions, by texts, it will not be easy to use them or win acceptance of their utility without suggesting suitable terms for them. Several terms may be proposed, and I oppose any effort to "standardize" by insisting that one of them be seleted and endorsed as, somehow, the "preferred," "authorized" or "best" term.  Here, for example, I have suggested both "new" and "mint" to characterize the kind of concept we should focus on.  New is more familiar and readily understood, but less precise, whereas "mint" is more unfamiliar but could be used with greater precision.  I shall use both, sometimes as a pleonasm, writing new (mint) to remind readers that a concept or term is new in the sense of being minted but not yet much used.

This example suggests a trade-off that is typical for new terms -- a novel meaning can be stipulated for a familiar word, or a new word can be coined.  There is a trade-off: it is easier to remember familiar words but they are often ambiguous, while neologisms are more precise but harder to remember.  Sometimes a well formed phrase can be used because it is both easy to remember and precise -- in the foregoing text, I proposed "state nation" and "ethnic nation" as two kinds of "nation", thinking that they would be fairly easy to remember and they could be unambiguous.  Often, I think, it will be useful to combine a familiar word and a neologism in a pleonasm.  I have written at length on this matter elsewhere -- see Onomantics and Terminology Part IV deals with Neologisms, Neoterisms, Meta-terms, and Pleonasms.

4. Term Evaluations. As with the evaluation of a concept, it is important to evaluate proposed new terms.  Again, the ETHNIC-L lists can provide vehicles for this purpose.  Whenever mint concepts are discussed and used, there ought to be some consideration of the pros and cons of terms used to designate them.  My experience is that a good idea is more likely to gain acceptance if a convenient and easily remembered term becomes associated with it -- but if the proposed term is clumsy or hard to remember, it is likely to fail.   The use of pleonasms serves not only to help convey a meaning, but they also remind readers that more than one term is available to represent a concept.  Users who want to use a mint concept will tend to adopt whatever term for it seems preferable to them, and usage will determine eventual evaluation -- some terms will be used and others will be forgotten.

Offering a choice is also, I think, psychologically useful -- when only one term is proposed, it is easy to fall into a defensive posture pitting supporters against defendents of a term and thereby making the concept a victim.  By contrast, when two or more terms are suggested, critics are more likely to discuss the pros and cons of each term, taking for granted the utility of the concept.  Moreover, the ability of a new (mint) concept to thrive is always affected by the acceptability of its terms.  Users of any suggested term should therefore be reminded, I think, that further proposals will be welcome.  My own experience has been several times that a term I first suggested for a concept was not very acceptable, and I readily accepted a better expression suggested by someone else.  Encouraging discourse about the pros and cons of a term, moreover, is not only a useful way to identify better terms, but it also strengthens interest in using the concept.

5. Cue Card Preparation.  We are so used to thinking of established classifications, especially those used to class library books, as a basis for linking concepts, that we ignore an alternative micro-level approach that starts from the bottom rather than the top.  I have used cue card to talk about a small file that can be used with any set of concepts to show relationships among them -- not only systematic relations, but also alphabetical, authors and theoretical contexts, time/place context, and the like.  For examples, the reader might look at my concept records for Turmoil among Nationsto see how a small set of linked concepts drawn from one paper can be created. Such samples could be posted on the proposed Terminology Page, with links to the papers from which the new concepts were taken. This would enable all participants in the ETHNIC-L project to learn about new concepts needed and described by their members.

The starting point for linking concepts is internal to their descriptions and begins with entailments, and tracings the terms I use for words in a concept description that represent other concepts to which they are related, within the same set of concept descriptions.  The idea is quite simple, but it is more grasped by example than explanation (the meanings of "ET, ST, and TR" are explained below):

Figure 1: Three linked concepts

• {1} a polity that is internationally recognized as a sovereign entity, having its own government: ET: STATE, NATION STATE; ST: INDEPENDENT STATE  [TR: {2}, {3}]

• {2} a state {1} that promotes cultural integration among its citizens: ST: STATE NATION.

• {3} a state {1} whose citizens predominantly share cultural features such as language and/or religion:  ST: NATIONAL STATE

These three "concept records" have a basic structure that starts with a concept description, followed by a term or terms that can be used to designate the concept.  The word, "state", as it appears in {2} and {3} is "entailed," which means that it refers to {1}.  In this case, "state" is an equivocal word that has a variety of possible meanings.  By inserting "{1}" in the texts offered in {2} and {3} readers are informed that, among the various possible meanings of "state," the one specified in {1} is intended.  This linkage also indicates a hierarchy:  "state" identifies both a  broad concept and two narrower ones, i.e., types of state.  The tracing (TR) which follows {1} is a reciprocal of the entailment: it identifies the concepts described in {2} and {3} as linked concepts. Formally speaking, entailed concepts are represented by terms found in a concept description, e.g., 'state' in {2} and {3}. By contrast, traced concepts are those in which a given concept {1} appears as an entailed term.

Building on such relations and others which I shall not discuss here, it is possible to create a small "nest" of linked concepts.  It helps readers understand them to see how they are linked, and it also helps one write better and more consistent concept descriptions to think about their linkages.  Guidance in the construction of linked concept descriptions and the creation of cue cards that outline them is available on documents in my Web Page.  They enable readers to see how described concepts are linked and to jump to those that interest them.  Each concept record should also, of course, contain a link to any cue card which references it.  Thus one may jump back and forth between each concept record and its cue cards.

I put this in plural because any concept can be linked with more than one cue card.  Each card simply represent a different way of conceptualizing the links between concepts which are not restricted to those based on entailments and tracings, although they provide an obvious starting point.  Other links arise between related concepts, e.g., where "A" and "B" overlap, creating a notion, "AB".  In such circumstances, one may have A without B, and B without A, but also both combined in AB.  This is very common and needs to be recognized as an important kind of relationship.

No doubt any set of new (mint) concepts, such as those offered in my TAN paper, can be represented in a small system, many concepts that will be presented as individual items will not have obvious links to other new concepts in the same presentation.  However, the presenters of a new concept may want to develop a small cue card on which they could identify several other concepts related to the one they are proposing.  They should not, however, undertake to write their own definitions of established terms for these concepts.  Rather, they should turn to any convenient dictionary or glossary in which these terms are defined and quote the sense definitions that identify their relevant meanings.

For example, in {1} above I use "polity" as a key word but it is not an entailed term because no definition is offered for it.  However, since "polity" has several established meanings, I could have clarified the intended one by quoting from my Webster's College Dictionary the definition offers for one of the meanings of polity, i.e., "2: a state or other organized community or body."  This concept clearly includes states like "Hawaii" or "Taiwan" as well as the "First Nations" of Canada and even politically organized communities that are not states, such as the "PLO," or the "Palestinian Authority."  A cue card for the concepts identified in {1}, {2},and {3}, therefore, might list {0} for a concept ("polity") that includes all of them plus others.  To underline its existence as a "used" (not a mint) concept, its "definition" would take the standard dictionary form of an entry word followed by a sense definition.  Using the sense number (e.g., '2' above) indicates that the word has other meanings (four senses of "polity" are defined in this dictionary).

6. Glossary Production.  Whereas cue cards can and should be produced independently by any scholar presenting mint concepts as a useful addition to our existing vocabulary, they should not, I think, venture to compile glossaries (nomenclators) in which larger sets of linked concepts would be collected.  However, I would argue that anyone interested in the systematizing of concepts, both old and new (used and mint) for a given field of study ought to be encouraged to do so.  However, they might want to be paid for their efforts and I see an analogy between this activity and the design of an indexing thesaurus, an activity that is rarely performed on a complimentary basis. Publishing houses, especially those with specialized constituencies and journals, might well sponsor such projects, or look for foundations to subsidize their efforts.

My thought is that the development of "primary" information resulting from presentations by authors, and the design of cue cards could lead to the accumulation of enough data to tempt sponsors to produce glossaries on a commercial basis.  I think having such glossaries would provide a great service for specialists working in any subject field and they should be willing to pay for them, providing incentives for publishers to sponsor them.  I shall not discuss any technical questions here, including those involved in the reconciliation of disparate sets of cue cards into coherent general classification schemes, but I believe it can be done and, indeed, will become increasingly necessary as the volume of literature in any given subject field increases.

An important related question involves the use of Web Pages in association with glossaries.  In general, let me only say that the Terminology Page I intend to post for ETHNIC-L will include links to sites at which mint concepts and their relations are presented. For a small example see the hierarchic display of linked concepts drawn from my Turmoil... paper. Members browsing among such records should be able to discover proposed innovations offered by colleagues around the world -- and the curator of the Terminology Page will monitor the data to facilitate linkages between related concepts.

In addition, this page will contain links to texts in which onomantic theory and concepts are presented, including some technical specifications for doing this kind of conceptual work.  There will also be several response forms designed to help presenters organize their data in a systematic way that will facilitate its coordination with the similar data provided by others.  There may also be some information about comprenehsive glossaries, thesauri and classification schemes that individuals will find useful, and could also be helpful to anyone compiling a systematic glossary for ethnicity research.  Clearly, whenever any such glossaries become available, they would also be listed -- as will the hypertext glossary for ethnicity research that Matti Malkia and I prepared. Such conceptually oriented glossaries should, of course, be used in tandem with alphabetized lists of established terms such as may be found in many existing technical dictionaries.

This is only a preliminary sketch -- further information can be found at my Web and Sites Pages, listed below. Anyone wishing to discuss these matters with the author can use the mailto form, also given below.

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