Elderly martial arts master Elderly martial arts master The elderly martial arts master is a mentor/teacher stock character in fiction, especially "Wuxia", "Chanbara", and other martial arts films. Typically an East Asian male, he is a near-invincible master of the martial arts, despite being advanced in age and presumably having a decrease in physical strength. Often he possesses the rank of Sensei (or teacher) and is referred to as such by his student. The elderly master most often teaches either generic kung fu or an exotic style specific to the fictional period (see List of fictional martial arts). During the films, the master often
Meaning (philosophy of language) individual speaker in a particular context wants to refer to. The word "dog" is an example of a meaning, but pointing at a nearby dog and shouting "This dog smells foul!" is an example of usage. From this distinction between usage and meaning arose the divide between the fields of Pragmatics and Semantics. Yet another distinction is of some utility in discussing language: "mentioning". "Mention" is when an expression refers to itself as a linguistic item, usually surrounded by quotation marks. For instance, in the expression "'Opopanax' is hard to spell", what is referred to is the word itself ("opopanax")