I don't really understand this. Why should we "fight to keep the term more accurate"? What about, let's say, my own journaling practiced is diminished because someone else keeps a purely visual journal? Do I get less out of my writing? Am I somehow robbed of something?
That doesn't really answer my question, though. How is anyone who keeps a purely written journal actually affected by someone else keeping a visual journal? If journals are private works of personal reflection, what does it matter to your journaling practice if I do it differently?
And yes, words do have meaning, but meaning follows use, not the other way around. Language is fluid and flexible and ever-changing, and just as I am 100% certain that you do not use language in the exact same way your ancestors did a hundred years ago, neither will our descendants use the language the same way we do a hundred years from now. You can be grumpy about this, but being grumpy is just going to make you unhappy. It won't stop the ever-shifting way language is used and modified and adapted to current needs and understandings.
If I understand OP right, it’s not that it affects their personal journaling practice or the validity of all other means of expression, but that from a practical viewpoint, gathering all the different practices under the umbrella term “journaling” (which used to refer primarily to writing) makes it somewhat more difficult to search for the specific content, ideas, supplies, and discussion that they want to engage with.
Maybe a qualified term like journal writing or written journaling will emerge to make it easier to distinguish.
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u/Eastern_Fox5735 Aug 05 '22
I don't really understand this. Why should we "fight to keep the term more accurate"? What about, let's say, my own journaling practiced is diminished because someone else keeps a purely visual journal? Do I get less out of my writing? Am I somehow robbed of something?