A quick post, mostly a note to self, about different meanings of the word "tradition". As regular readers will know, I'm all about tradition, so I'm interested in its different and overlapping senses.
(Isn't that interesting in itself, that so many words have different and overlapping senses-- as though meaning is inherently plural and fuzzy?)
So here are some meaning of "tradition" that occur to me:
1) Something like a holiday, or a fair, or a celebration, that happens at regular intervals, and is self-consciously practiced as a tradition.
2) A custom or practice that occurs regularly, although not necessarily at fixed intervals-- it could be many times a day. Shaking hands, for instance.
3) A custom or practice that occurs at intervals, but not at fixed intervals. For instance, the "gun barrel" sequence at the start of a James Bond film. Or eating popcorn at the cinema. Basically, when X happens, Y traditionally also happens.
4) A highly identifiable way of life, with discipline and rules and expectations. For instance, the Carmelite tradition.
5) The traditions of a sub-culture, such as the punk or heavy metal tradition.
6) The traditions of a whole society over time, such as the English tradition or the Irish tradition, or even the Western tradition.
7) Aesthethic traditions, such as the tradition of English poetry. What T.S. Eliot was writing about in "Tradition and the Individual Talent".
8) Aesthetic traditions that are really sub-traditions, often not perceived straight away. For instance, that Harry Potter is in the tradition of Enid Blyton.
9) Local or family stories passed orally from generation to generation. "There's a local tradition that Shakespeare once stayed at the inn."
10) Intellectual traditions, such as the Marxist tradition or the Jungian tradition.
11) A "tradition" meaning a corpus of law or interpretation; the Common Law tradition, the Westminster parliamentary tradition, the Talmudic tradition.
12) An old-fashioned or customary way of doing something, used as a simple adjective: "She was raised in a very traditional household."
I suppose there are many more. Any obvious ones I'm leaving out?
