Binary oppositions

Binary oppositions

When I first heard this word I remember thinking what the heck is that? It sounds heavily intellectual, that maybe my poor brain would have trouble comprehending something so high and above me. When in class we started to name a few on the board, suddenly the concept didn’t look so bad. It wasn’t scary, it was easy.

After reading Maris’ blog, I realized she had it right, “binary oppositions” is just a glorified term for “antonyms.” I mean really, day/night, boy/girl, I realize that binary oppositions is all about defining one by relation to the other, but it’s the same stinking thing as an antonym! Maybe English major intellectuals needed to come up with a more intellectual sounding term to make things sound a bit better and even more scholarly, haha.

But the most interesting thing about these “binary oppositions” is the connotations they are inherent with each set. In class we classified the binary oppositions one as “man” and one as “woman.” It was interesting to see which words were classified with “man” and the others as “woman.” The words that went under the category of “man” were more positive words in their connotations, and the words that went under “woman” were more negative in their connotations. This was very intriguing to me, it is fascinating how a word has come to take on a connotation that may have nothing to do with its meaning. Let’s take day/night for example. One could say that day carries positive meanings, because it is light as opposed to the negative connotation of darkness that is involved with night. When in reality what makes the night any worse than day? Are they not just periods of normal natural occurrences? Is one more positive than the other?

All in all, binary oppositions, antonyms, whatever you want to call them are fascinating. It just goes to show how society has placed these connotations on language, and how sometimes we need one word in order to describe another. Because without day, how could we even know what night was?