Hi all
I am hoping this account is peculiar to the Australian vernacular, so it wil
be of some interest to folk afar. If its universal, let me know.
Two radio announcers this morning on 'youth' radio in Australia,
discussing the term 'packing a sad' and its meaning. It was suggested at
first that it meant 'being sad or sorry' but callers alerted them to the more
'common' meaning of getting really angry. The host of the program
clarified this meaning by using an alternative expression 'chucking a
spazz' or 'going spastic'. These are two expressions that have been in the
Australian (Oz) vernacular for years. In my own childhood time 'spastic'
was a person with cerebral palsy (and yes we still have The Spastic
Centre and the Spastic Society in existence in Oz). The term in the
sixties and seventies was perjorative and was used to infer that someone
was in some way, intellectually or mentally deficient - not in reality but as
an insult.
These days it has taken the conotation of a tantrum. "Chucking a spazz"
or a "spastic" where its meaning is other than a person with cerebral
palsy, has not been a term that is used in 'polite circles' but increasingly it
is being used across demographics. It is now used as a colloquialism on
National radio. My guess is that the flailing of limbs of someone throwing
a tantrum is being compared to athetoid movements associated with
cerebral palsy. It seems however that the connection between the two
has been lost. I refer to Mairian's mentioning of historical antecedents
and I think this is an interesting and probably not unique example of a
word changing meaning (whereas terms such as idiot, imbecile and
moron still denote 'intellectually deficient').
By the way, re offensive terminology and individual threshholds of
'offence'. If someone refers to a word that you are offended by and you
alert them to it and are then accused of being precious - call them a fuck-
wit, tell them that you're quite comfortable with that term and ask them
exactly where they would like to draw the line :-)
Best regards
Laurence Bathurst
School of Occupation and Leisure Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
University of Sydney
P.O. Box 170
Lidcombe NSW 2141
Australia
Phone: (62 1) 9351 9509
Fax: (62 1) 9351 9166
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Please visit the School's interim web site at
http://www.ot.cchs.usyd.edu.au
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Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious
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