reification

See also:réification

English

Etymology

First attested around 1846; amacaroniccalqueofGermanVerdinglichung,using-ification(“making”)forver-+-lich+-ung,andLatinrēs(“thing”)forDing(“thing”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key):/ˌɹeɪəfəˈkeɪʃən/,enPR:rāəfəkāshən
• Rhymes:-eɪʃən

Noun

reification(countableanduncountable,pluralreifications)

1. The consideration of anabstractthing as if it wereconcrete,or of aninanimateobject as if it wereliving.
   • 2002,Timothy Bewes,Reification: Or The Anxiety of Late Capitalism,Verso,→ISBN,page146:

     Thereificationof art and religion, a symptom of their historical obsolescence, takes the form of their instrumentalization, their reduction to a mere use value. At this point they become ‘cultural goods’, writes Adorno, and ‘are no longer taken quite seriously by anybody.’

   • 2018,Pieter Seuren,Saussure and Sechehaye[…],BRILL,→ISBN,page209:

     Computer scientists found out how functionalreificationis in programming languages: they call it ‘object-oriented programming’[…].

   • 2022September 20, Danielle Carr, “Mental Health Is Political”, inThe New York Times‎^[1],→ISSN:

     Reificationswaps out a political problem for a scientific or technical one; it’s how, for example, the effects of unregulated tech oligopolies become “social media addiction,” how climate catastrophe caused by corporate greed becomes a “heat wave” — and, by the way, how the effect of struggles between labor and corporations combines with high energy prices to become “inflation.”

2. The consideration of ahuman beingas an impersonal object.
3. (programming)A process that makes a computable/addressable object out of a non-computable/addressable one; or aconcreteclass out of agenericone.
   • 2020,Marco Faella,Seriously Good Software: Code that works, survives, and wins,Simon and Schuster,→ISBN,page251:

     Contrary to Java, C++ and C# implement generics viareification,meaning that each specific version of a generic class, likeList<String>is converted into a concrete class, either at compile time (C++) or at runtime (C#).

4. (linguistics)Thetransformationof anatural-languagestatementinto a form in which its actions and events arequantifiablevariables.

Synonyms

• hypostatization
• materialization
• objectification
• pathetic fallacy
• thingification

Derived terms

• dereification

Derived terms

• reify

Translations

Consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living

• Bulgarian:материализиранеn(materializirane)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin:Cụ tượng hóa(jùxiànghuà)

• Finnish:konkretisointi
• French:réification(fr)
• German:Verdinglichungf,Vergegenständlichungf,Reifikation(de)f
• Greek:υποστατοποίησηf(ypostatopoíisi)
• Hebrew:חיפצון
• Korean:실재화(siljaehwa)
• Macedonian:опредметувањеn(opredmetuvanje)
• Norwegian:tingliggjøring
• Portuguese:reificação(pt)f
• Russian:реификация(ru)(reifikacija)
• Spanish:cosificaciónf,reificaciónf
• Turkish:cisimleştirme,maddeleştirme,soyutlaştırma

Consideration of a human being as an impersonal object

programming: Process that makes out of a non-computable/addressable object a computable/addressable one

• German:Reifizierungf