The 'losing battle' is against those who seek to harbour language
to prop up elites. Most professional people, the clergy, politicians have
sort to create
a web-of-words around their own houses for many reasons:
1. as an essential test;
2. a way to justify the fees that their priestly knowledge costs;
3. as a validity in the war of the classes;
4. and, back to point 1 - as a password, secret-handshake, nod-of-the-word
to confirm one's
belonging or, more pointedly, one's tresspassing beyond one's station.
Best..
Clayton
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Brenton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 7:00 PM
Subject: Re: Problematise this
> I know well Dave's frustration, though. Working in education I wage a
daily
> losing battle against language which means nothing. The dreaded 'synergy'
and
> the classic 'proactive' are creeping back in. 'Performativity' currently
> really gets my goat. There was a psychologist on TV the other day talking
> about the 'principle of propinquity', which means, um, that people are
more
> likely to get together with someone who is near them than someone who is
far
> away. Isn't it just a community defining itself by gating itself off with
> language accessible only to those inside it?
>
> Bryan Appleyard, writing for the Sunday Times last week attacked Stephen
> Hawking for being too 'scientistic'. Yes, Hawking should be balancing out
his
> lopsided scientific bent with a hobby - weaving baskets, or 'basketising'
> perhaps. And Appleyard should be 'retiring'.
>
> Sam
>
> (btw, if anyone else here has a beef about Appleyard, I'd be happy to hear
> backchannel - I'm thinking of starting some kind of satirical
> counter-movement...)
>
>
>
>
> At 05:03 AM 1/29/02 , you wrote:
> >I just thought, I could assume the English language has only recently
been
> >discovered and, attempting to trace its evolution, I could then postulate
> >that 'problematise' descends from a hypothetical ancestor 'problematy'.
Or
> >even 'problematis'. Though I prefer the former, as it is reasonable to
> >speculate that a problematy was what occurred when the ancient ones found
> >their coinage unacceptable on washday at the local problemat.
> >
> >Best
> >
> >Dave
> >
> >
> >David Bircumshaw
> >
> >Leicester, England
> >
> >Home Page
> >
> >A Chide's Alphabet
> >
> >Painting Without Numbers
> >
> >http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
>
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