Absent Referent - Implicit Vs. Explicit

Implicit Vs. Explicit

Any written symbol for the Absent Referent (e.g., {}, "G-D", 0, "null", etc.) is by nature explicit. However, there is also the implicit Absent Referent, where the symbol for the missing thing is also missing. Examples:

  • "wife" -- A person with self-identity, yet exists relative the "husband" (implicit absent referent)
  • "pet" -- Barely a thing of its own right, a "pet" mostly exists in reference to the Owner/Master, implicitly absent referent.

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Famous quotes containing the words implicit and/or explicit:

    The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.
    Alice Meynell (1847–1922)

    I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.
    John Updike (b. 1932)