Introduction: Ascribing Meaning to the Semantic Field “Sacred” in Academic Research and Current Journalism

Abstract

The term “sacred” has a long history, but this introduction demonstrates that the concept of a contrast between the sacred or holy and the profane or trivial arose only at the beginning of the 20th century. A shared characteristic of definitions of the sacred or holy is that they are something special which is separated from the profane or trivial world. In the research discourse, sacred is not just a critical but also a controversial term.In our two case studies, we set out to analyze how meaning is ascribed to the semantic field “sacred”. Building on Laclau’s concept of empty signifiers (Laclau 1996) and the understanding that sacred and related terms of the lexical/semantic field are not stable but have ever-changing meanings, we explore how the semantic field is filled in academic and contemporary journalistic contexts.