Asking Questions Cross-Culturally: Some Problems of Linguistic Comparability

To do research we must know what we and our associates are talking about now. We must constantly ask ourselves: “What do these words mean? Why do I use them?” If we are reading research documents written by others, say a year ago, we must be sure we know what the words meant then. If we read a document written thirty years ago, full comprehension is almost a philological job, so rapid is the change in the connotation and denotation of terms. ¹