The term plurivocal is not part of the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ). However, there are those who use it as an antonym of univocal .
Coming from the late Latin univŏcus , univocal refers to that which has a single name or meaning . The univocal always retains the same meaning and leaves no room for doubts of interpretation.
The opposite of the univocal , in this framework, is the plurivocal . That is why a plurivocal discourse can be interpreted in different ways.
Poetry , to mention one case, tends to be plurivocal. The authors resort to abstract images and tropes that each reader can receive in different ways, thus generating multiple readings .
Although poetry is an example that is cited very frequently to talk about multiple interpretations, it can be said that art in general is plurivocal, since it never offers a completely explicit discourse , something that can happen in journalism or law. , For example.
In an artistic work, of any type, there are a series of silences, of "gaps" that the person who receives it must fill in using their intuition, based on their own experience, to turn it into something unique, different from the perception they the others have. It is said that there are never two people who read the same book, listen to the same song or watch the same movie, since each one interprets it in their own way, with more or less accentuated differences.
It is important to emphasize that these differences in the interpretation of an artistic work are natural and considered perfectly acceptable; That is, they cannot be "wrong", since art connects us with ourselves and reveals things to us that we do not usually see in normal situations, something that the creators cannot control. A singer-songwriter writes a song based on his own experience, but he cannot expect his followers to understand it in only one way; Once you publish it, you will probably be surprised to learn of the new forms your verses have taken, far beyond the limits of your imagination.
All this is invalidated when the nature of a text is informative, for example. Let's think about a basic example: an instruction manual. Each step that appears in its pages must be interpreted in only one way, since an error in understanding can lead to an accident. To achieve this degree of clarity, it is very important that the editor uses absolutely direct language, without ornaments or ambiguous phrases.
The following example sentence does not contain plurivocal language : "Take piece number three by the base (the thickest part) and place it in the gap of number ten, pressing until only its base protrudes (see figure b)." This must be understood in only one way, and any other is, by definition, incorrect.
In a philosophical sense, love is a plurivocal feeling. Each individual understands love in different ways, since it can be associated with companionship, respect, solidarity, passion or reciprocity, to name a few possibilities. There is, therefore, no single definition of love.
Certain social or political movements, on the other hand, can be classified as plurivocal. It can be said that Peronism , which emerged in Argentina from the doctrine developed by Juan Domingo Perón , is a plurivocal movement: it has leaders and militants who identify with the left and others with the right. At the same time, there are Peronists who promote state intervention in the market and others who promote liberalism.
Something similar can be expressed regarding feminism . This group includes those who defend women's rights and fight for gender equality, although a wide range of paths can be used to meet these goals. Furthermore, beyond agreeing on the general objective, people who identify with feminism may disagree on many other issues.