Because the words are not neutral, and even if the word dog does not bark, it goes without saying that the very term mega basin has a very distinct form of strangeness, for example a “hill restraint”. But words count: for example, it goes without saying that the question of the Iranian arsenal would be posed differently if we were not talking about a nuclear centrifuge, the term potato masher or nuclear Thermomix would probably give another image to the Persian arsenal and, therefore, would make it more acceptable.
Especially since the term basin could be considered improper, since this word designates, according to Larousse, either a wide and deep metal or plastic container, or a container used for curdling milk, or by soaking the cocoons in silk spinning. Under these conditions, the term mega basin represents a form of extension of use, practically a metaphor, as with Saint-Exupéry who, from his seaplane, observes the sea which ” in the rain gives off vapors like a large hot basin “.
In a less poetic register, the term basin has only recently designated a substitute reservoir, in other words an agricultural water storage structure. As for the “mega” prefix, it resonates in a perfectly worrying way ─ one just wonders why so far there has been no giga basin project. And whatever the case, the notion of a mega basin conjures up disturbing images of an XXL household utensil stuck in the grove.
One more proof that the signified is not neutral and remains linked to the signifier, proof that the police should perhaps be policed in the ZAD, the Zone of Appellations and Denominations. In other words, the choice of the mega basin is not only a question of shape but also of substance, the bottom of the mega basin, whatever its shape, influences the substantive debate that one can have sometimes without too much restraint about these water reservoirs.