History of the family History of the family The history of the family is a branch of social history that concerns the sociocultural evolution of kinship groups from prehistoric to modern times. The family has a universal and basic role in all societies. Research on the history of the family crosses disciplines and cultures, aiming to understand the structure and function of the family from many viewpoints. For example, sociological, ecological or economical perspectives are used to view the interrelationships between the individual, their relatives, and the historical time. The study of family history has shown that family systems are flexible, culturally diverse and
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")