Philosophy, language and the politics of abortion
After having worked for several years as an editor of academic texts, I've tended to be a bit of a language pedant, and I seem to be becoming more pedantic and curmudgeonly about it as I get older.
About a week ago I made a language pedant comment on someone's blog, about a statement that "family planning is as everyone knows a code for abortion".
I didn't know that, and queried it, and that led into a discussion in the comments section of the blog, which led in turn to several articles being quoted, and one idea leading to the next. And then I looked at another blog, which took the whole thing one stage further, and referred to several more articles, so eventually I decided to write a blog post that linked some of the articles and other blog posts and tried to develop it into a coherent train of thought punctuated, of course, by interludes of my usual curmudgeonly language pedantry.
It's on eugenics and abortion, and the basic thesis is that anti-abortion campagners are often counterproductive, because they focus their campaigns on urban legends like FOCA, and so perpetuate the public image of being cranks and fanatics (kooks, as the Americans say) who do not deserve to be taken seriously.
It might be more useful for them to think through the philosophical underpinnings of their position, and those of the people who disagree with them, which really rest on a different anthropology.
Anyway, I've blogged about that at Philosophy and the politics of abortion, so if you're interested in the topic, you can see how well I've succeeded in drawing the various threads together (or failed to succeed).
Then a friend, knowing of my interest in language and usage, pointed me to a Facebook discussion where darkies were discussing darkie English, and I blogged about that at Darkies discuss darkie English on Facebook. The discussion is especially concerned with English words and phrases that mean something different in darkie dialect from what they mean in other versions of English, like "at least", "sharp", and "next of next week". Well, "next of next week" is only found in darkie English, I suppose.
I also discussed that in the alt.usage.english newsgroup, and it appears that in both the US and UK "darkies" is considered rather impolite and avoided, even to the extent of being removed from songs like "Old folks at home". It's interesting how cultures differ in that way.
About a week ago I made a language pedant comment on someone's blog, about a statement that "family planning is as everyone knows a code for abortion".
I didn't know that, and queried it, and that led into a discussion in the comments section of the blog, which led in turn to several articles being quoted, and one idea leading to the next. And then I looked at another blog, which took the whole thing one stage further, and referred to several more articles, so eventually I decided to write a blog post that linked some of the articles and other blog posts and tried to develop it into a coherent train of thought punctuated, of course, by interludes of my usual curmudgeonly language pedantry.
It's on eugenics and abortion, and the basic thesis is that anti-abortion campagners are often counterproductive, because they focus their campaigns on urban legends like FOCA, and so perpetuate the public image of being cranks and fanatics (kooks, as the Americans say) who do not deserve to be taken seriously.
It might be more useful for them to think through the philosophical underpinnings of their position, and those of the people who disagree with them, which really rest on a different anthropology.
Anyway, I've blogged about that at Philosophy and the politics of abortion, so if you're interested in the topic, you can see how well I've succeeded in drawing the various threads together (or failed to succeed).
Then a friend, knowing of my interest in language and usage, pointed me to a Facebook discussion where darkies were discussing darkie English, and I blogged about that at Darkies discuss darkie English on Facebook. The discussion is especially concerned with English words and phrases that mean something different in darkie dialect from what they mean in other versions of English, like "at least", "sharp", and "next of next week". Well, "next of next week" is only found in darkie English, I suppose.
I also discussed that in the alt.usage.english newsgroup, and it appears that in both the US and UK "darkies" is considered rather impolite and avoided, even to the extent of being removed from songs like "Old folks at home". It's interesting how cultures differ in that way.