Wordmap

Book : Tribal - Intro : The riddle of Hiddink

001 : 04-01-2025 : Rile & Rankle

The football coach from Netherlands riled the South Korean players and rankled the fans, who were used to deep respect for age and experience.

Rile - Short term irritation, anger and agitation. Like her continuous interruption riled me up. It might be like say, my emails rile you up.

Rankle - Long term bitterness, pain and lasting resentment. Like her harsh words still rankle him years later. It’s something deeper and more permanent.

Starting both the words with the genre of agitation, resentment, and anger. But the beauty is the difference in the amount of depth, degree and permanence of both these words. And more beautiful is how they sort of jingle together enabling the writer to use them together in the same phrase, creating a rich feeling of the pleasure of experiencing different pressure points while undergoing a rejuvenating massage.

It was beautiful. Another reason I liked these two words is the sheer beauty that they encompass beneath their surface semantic meaning. Very much like Kali. She might appear fierce and repulsive for the initiated. But for a devotee is the deepest well of life giving nectar of love and beauty - both physical and ethereal.

002 : 04-02-2025 : soliloque, monologue, deference, “ring true”

Soliloquy - A speech to oneself. A soliloquy is a speech in which a character speaks to himself or herself, revealing his or her thoughts without addressing a listener. It is a dramatic device often used in plays, particularly in Shakespearean works.

Every World Cup, the soccer sages of the media soliloquize about a clash of cultures on the field: German industriousness versus Brazilian samba, Italian artistry versus British pragmatism. To Hiddink, these “national character” stereotypes never quite rang true.

Morris, Michael. Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together . Swift Press. Kindle Edition.

Similar soliloquies are often used in literature, theater and films to provide insight into a character’s inner thoughts, motivations, and conflicts. They can also serve to advance the plot or develop themes within the work.

Soliloquy is different from monologue. In a monologue, there is a listener, while in a soliloquy, the speaker is alone and not addressing anyone else. A monologue can be a speech delivered to an audience or another character, while a soliloquy is more introspective and personal.

Example of Soliloque - Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” speech is a classic example of a soliloquy, where he contemplates life and death while alone on stage. Example of Monologue - In contrast, a monologue might be a character speaking to another character or an audience, such as a stand-up comedian performing a routine or a character delivering a speech in a play. or for that matter, Mark Antony’s speech “Friends, Romans and Countrymen” in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a famous example of a monologue, where he addresses the crowd after Caesar’s assassination.

Soon, Hiddink’s bet seemed to be paying off. The Korean social habit that had been slowing their play - deference and self-criticim - surfaced less frequently in the field.

Deference - Respectful submission or yielding to the judgment, opinion, or will of another. It is a way of showing respect and consideration for someone else’s authority or expertise. In the context of the book, it refers to the Korean players’ tendency to show respect and submission to their seniors.