Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, October 23, 2022
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49 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Picking up on a little contretemps between Steven and me. He wrote:
To which I say, no. No, words do not have power. Ideas have power. Words are the tools we use to express ideas. Words have definitions, they do not have power. Words have only such meaning as we choose to give them and must be understood within context, sometimes simple emotional context, sometimes within the context of more complex ideas.
For your consideration, I present: fuck.
Fuck you. Said with anger it has entirely different meaning than it does when said with a wry grin. Fuck me, can be an invitation to sex, or a rueful comment on fate’s vicissitudes, which would be an idea. A sexual proposal is also an idea. As is wry self-awareness, or even anger. The word fuck, separated from context has only its dictionary definitions, and quite a few definitions at that.
Or the word liberty. Everyone on all sides agrees they love liberty, but they are loving very different things, because although the word has several dictionary definitions, the power is in the context, in the use of the word.
But of course the obvious word is the N-word, the big bad. In a rap lyric, or coming from Dave Chappelle it has a very different meaning than it does when shouted from the window of some passing cracker’s pick-up truck. In fact, the skin color of the person using the word alters the meaning of the word. It’s not the word, it’s the context and the use, IOW, the idea. The cracker in the pick-up has one idea of its use, Dave has another. From one man’s mouth it has the power of a deadly idea, race hatred. From another man’s mouth it has the power of racial solidarity.
It’s not the word. It’s the idea, the intention, the context. Which is why I object to unnecessary neologisms. If I decide to call an eggplant an aubergine the vegetable remains unaffected. In fact, I can call an eggplant a meteorite and nothing about the vegetable is altered. Eggplants do not become meteorites and meteorites do not become eggplants.
In order to have any effect on an eggplant I have to do more than give it a different name. I have to bake it into eggplant parmesan, which would taste just as bad if I called it meteorite parmesan. And if I have no intention of changing anything in real life, why am I changing words? Just for kicks? No, I’m changing words in lieu of actually doing anything. I mean, sure, I could help a dying man or I could just decide to call him a transitioning man, and avoid the guilt of doing nothing to help.
Let’s all decide to call cancer, sunshine. Do we still mean a deadly disease? Yes. Did switching words make chemo any less necessary? No. The power is not in the word, the power is in the meaning, the idea. In this example the idea remains cancer no matter what word you use.
Word is to idea as stage is to play. It’s a tool we use to convey an idea, it is not itself the idea. A bit of knowledge that comes from being, as Steven points out, a guy who makes a living writing.
Does Dunkin’ Have Better Doughnut in Europe?
Probably, after all they need to compete with bakers that are renowned for their quality and creativity. Here in the US the local bakery has all but disappeared.
Sacheen Littlefeather was a Native American icon. Her sisters say she was an ethnic fraud
In a world awash in “identity,” one of the weirdest permutations is claiming for yourself, something that your not. Whether it is regarding racial group identity or something as simple as belonging to the military. These are very odd if not ill people.
@Sleeping Dog: There’s now an entire Wikipedia article on the subject of “racial and ethnic misrepresentation.”
One point that complicates the subject is that there’s a difference between a white person trying to claim a nonwhite identity and the reverse. For a long time, the singer Prince claimed to be half-Italian. It turned out both his parents were black, though his looks suggest he had significant white ancestry. Still, it’s quite a bit easier to sympathize with what he did (claiming to be biracial in a society with strong anti-black barriers to success) than is the case for someone like Rachel Dolezal.
(I myself have noticed that claims of Italian ancestry are often used to hide more stigmatized ancestries.)
@Sleeping Dog:
Her birth name was Marie Louise Cruz. According to her sisters, she also lied about being abused by their father as a child.
@Kylopod:
A mentor of mine from grad school was of Azorean heritage, he occasionally joked that he could legitimately be black or white depending on which conferred the greater value to him.
Also there was a movie out last year regarding two black women who passed as white, one all her life, while the other for a period.
@Michael Reynolds:
If I understand you correctly, this is the crux of your position. That is, ideas are primary and words are subservient.
I agree that this relationship (ideas –> words) holds. It’s almost* self-evident.
Where I disagree (assuming I have accurately characterized your position) is on the notion that words ONLY serve this function. There is an extensive literature in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, etc showing that words are not to be regulated to the role of (other) s-word.
The work on stimulus equivalence and derived stimulus relations might be of interest, especially because you rightly note the importance of context.
To be sure, the scientific jury is still out on this matter — what do words do and what don’t they do? Nevertheless, I do think it safe to say that words play more than a subservient role.
*I hedge because, well, lots of reasons that are beside the point.
ps, It is possible for people to do more than one thing at a time — eg, advocate for “better” language AND do work to right social wrongs. Indeed, a lot of people do both things and more. Some of these people are even academics. Though I grant you that it would be preferable if more people emphasized the work.
@Michael Reynolds: “If I decide to call an eggplant an aubergine the vegetable remains unaffected. In fact, I can call an eggplant a meteorite and nothing about the vegetable is altered. Eggplants do not become meteorites and meteorites do not become eggplants.”
And yet, if someone were to publish a piece saying that we should call eggplants aubergines, you would be the first — and probably — only person here screaming about how terrible academics and progressives are and that eggplant is the only correct way to refer to this vegetable and the fact that someone wants to call it something else proves that everyone to your left is a secret fascist.
You keep stating that words have no power at all and only the idea is important, but then you type hundreds of furious words every time someone in the world suggests that any nomenclature for anything is better or more appropriate than the one you use.
Seems to me that if words don’t matter and in fact are completely unimportant, you spend an awful lot of your time and metal energy bitching about something you declare no one should care about.
@Sleeping Dog: I can’t speak for Europe, but Dunkin had better donuts in Korea than it did in Portland (OR). Dunkin Donuts were always stale when you got them at a Portland store. (Like buying Krispy Kremes that have been shipped to a Vegas casino coffee shop stale.) It was a big reason as to why the franchisees all lost their shirts and closed.
And the coffee was terrible, too. (Another change, Dunkins does as much spro business as Starbucks in Korea.)
@wr: I’m not quite sure why people get so exercised about MRs
bloviationspronouncements on language. He’s just playing the role of a differently-abled person who’s trying to be intellectual.It’s all a game.
If you are feeling cold this AM, try reading this: Judge dismisses fraud case against Texas man who waited seven hours to vote
It made my blood boil.
I don’t even know how to think about this. Amazing? Frightening? Especially when I think about how old she must have been when she started to be this good at this age.
@Michael Reynolds:
I am perplexed that you seem to think I am being derisive by noting your profession (or so it seems here and in especially in the other thread). As I noted there, this is not the case.
I note it in these contexts because it is weird to me for a person who uses words as the tools of their trade to be the one to try and make the arguments that you do about the power (or lack thereof) or words.
My response to the rest is likely to be a post of its own.
[Tangent alert] I read Michael’s comment above and thought, oh so it’s the “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” bit, but when I looked it up, I discovered, as is often the case, Shakespeare’s words were more complex than I remembered, with layers. Juliet was pleading with Romeo to disavow his family, that the only thing separating them was his name, “Montague”, and that he would be the same man if he were to change it. On one level, obviously true. The rose, after all, remains unchanged regardless of what people call it. But in this specific case her supposition is completely erroneous. There would be enormous consequences for all involved if Romeo Montague were to disavow his family and change his name.
Which got me thinking about how actors and directors interpret characters. I would see her one way if, in the portrayal, Juliet is aware of this and is just idly fantasizing. But if she believed this to be true, I would see her as a scatterbrained and impulsive young teenager.
After I had kids of my own I came across “Romeo and Juliet” again and realized there were at least two tales written in the exact same words. To the young it is a tragic tale of perfect love crushed by the cruel world. To parents it is the horrifying account of how children gain the power to cause catastrophe for themselves and others long before they gain the insight and maturity to wield that power.
Trump is the Son of God. Yes, he is. “Prophet” Julie Green says so.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/pro-trump-reawaken-america-tour-flies-off-the-rails-over-demonic-satellites-and-deep-state-mcdonalds
Wait. McDonald’s is part of the Deep State? Does Trump know?
@CSK: Every “Save America”, “Reawaken America”, etc is part of the growing (actually, reawakening, Christian Fascism/Nationalism) movement. A real danger to this country and, although some are now paying attention, most media, influencers, etc. just pooh-pooh it and believe it is an unimportant marginal group. It is not. Just look at the referenced article. “Flies off the rails” “crazy”, the tone of mocker, etc. The observers, journalists, and writers just don’t get it. The degenerate Christian evangelists are now fully on board and it is being spread weekly at a megachurch near you.
@Scott:
I take your point, and I agree with it, but honestly, I can’t help laughing at these people. I understand that they’re dangerous, but they’re also utter horse’s asses.
@CSK: Just wait until he arises from the dead.
@wr:
I think that’s a mischaracterization of what bothers MR (and me, to a lesser extent).
As an example, in this comment, MR mentions cancer. He points out that changing the words for cancer does nothing to actually address the problem of cancer. He’s used other examples in other contexts.
You can say that words or ideas have power, but changing words doesn’t magically alter reality or people’s attitudes.
The premise that using “enslaved person” instead of “slave” will change society’s attitude and perspective on slavery is, at best, questionable. And this is even assuming that this small group of advocates can fundamentally alter usage for hundreds of millions of English speakers. And to what end?
The on-the-ground reality is what matters most to people like me and MR. We generally think it is both dumb and a waste of time to believe that social engineering via language/word alteration works to solve real-world problems. That so many people spend time policing language or otherwise believing that the key to social change is ensuring people use the properly anointed words instead of doing hard work in the real world, is what MR and I often “bitch” about (irony alert for using offensive, sexist language).
As I often say, talk is cheap, it’s actions that matter most.
@Andy: “As an example, in this comment, MR mentions cancer. He points out that changing the words for cancer does nothing to actually address the problem of cancer. He’s used other examples in other contexts.”
Of course that’s a terrible example and not even a good analog — so much so that it’s bordering pretty close to a bad-faith argument.
Because no one has ever said that changing the word for cancer would eliminate the disease. On the other hand, there as a serious move a couple decades back to move away from talking about “cancer victims” and referring to them as patients or survivors. I suppose to you this is just more mealy-mouthed nonsense, since (apparently) once a word is used it can never be replaced, but the idea was to help empower those who were dealing with this disease and encourage them not to consider themselves hapless victims but instead participants in their care. And of course this is the actual analog for what you’re complaining about.
Do you also have a problem with this?
@Andy: “You can say that words or ideas have power, but changing words doesn’t magically alter reality or people’s attitudes.”
Really? Seems that your Republican party doesn’t agree with you on this. That’s why Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz have spent their careers coming up with negative terms for things people had previously liked.
You really don’t think that decades of calling inheritance taxes “death taxes” instead of, say, “taxes on free gifts to the spoiled heirs of billionaires” didn’t work to change the attitudes of a lot of people?
@wr: Yes, as an example, let’s have a meditation on the word “woke” and its impact on today’s politics.
Well, I think that calling it “meteorite parmesan” would mightily confuse your dinner guests.
@MarkedMan:
Not the least of which would be that Signore Capulet would STILL not want Juliet to marry Romeo because “what kind of a man abandons his family?”
Still, conventional wisdom places the age of Juliet at about 14-16 for the purposes of teaching the play, so the line is not unreasonable relative to the thinking of the 14-16 year olds that I’ve met.
@CSK: Pat Robertson had a similar message from God before the 2020 election, except that his had God telling him that Trump was going to win but that win would cause civil upheaval from the Left that would usher in the end times and the emergence of the Antichrist.
Dispensationalists give America entirely too large a role in Biblical prophecy. 🙁
@Andy:
The way that I read this is you and Daddy Reynolds believe that you and only you have the power to determine now only how people use words but also the power to demand that people are effected by words in your approved way.
What does doing the “hard work” even mean? Groups you disfavor have to act as a proper supplicant until you deign to to approve of them. Your whole argument smacks of that “what is a woman” nonsense that TERFs like to use.
And can we do away with the straw man idea that there are people out there that think if we could all use the approved word list life would be sunshine and puppies. No one thinks that. We’re just looking for a bit of marginal positivity in a otherwise brutal and hellish world.
UK news:
Boris Johnson announces he will not run in the Conservative leadership contest.
Possibly he couldn’t get the 100 nominations required.
As I said before, I strongly suspect some who declared public support did so only to get the “Karens” off their backs, had zero intention of actually nominating, and privately said so to Brady or Berry.
Second possibility, that enough had made known their determination that if he returned, they would resign the whip, and use the Privileges Committee investigation to break him.
So, probably too late for Braverman or another hard-Right type to mount an attempt.
Johnson, it should be noted, is NOT a hard right guy by conviction or even inclination; he allied with them purely to become PM.
But his will he/won’t he act, plus the Truss implosion, has wrecked their possible campaigns.
So, will Mordaunt get over the 100 barrier?
And if she does, will she push it to a membership vote?
My very tentative opinion, as of now, is that one way or another, Sunak gets it by acclamation.
Please note: neither Sunak nor Mordaunt are One Nation/traditionalist/Remainer types by any stretch of the imagination.
Conservative centrists will probably need at least a couple of election cycles, and the defeat by despair of the UKIP entryists, to mount a comeback.
If they ever do.
@JohnSF:
Thanks. I was hoping you’d comment on this.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Gee, I thought the anti-Christ was Bill Clinton.
In Ukraine; there are worrying signs that Russia my be setting up possible propaganda basis for “implausible deniability” operations.
Russia defense chief makes unfounded claims of Kyiv ready to use ‘dirty bomb’
And possible plans to blow the Kakhova dam on the Dnipro, and claim “Ukraine diddit”.
In the meantime, Russia continues to hammer Ukraine’s electrical power.
But some indications that Europe is supplying a increased quantities of equipment donations by member states as requests come in from Ukraine, and the EU commission is hoping to encourage more donations of power equipment from private companies.
Poland has called on Brussels to help procure and provide electrical equipment including heavy-duty circuit breakers and fuses, transformers, cables, and more diesel generators, and has been supplying a lot of gear itself.
The problem is, the EU Commission only has limited authority to take the initiative in this area, and various European governments are too paralyzed by (largely unrelated) internal political squabbles to authorize a no-limit program of support.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I keep wondering why they fail to notice Sir Keir Starmer’s 666 tattoo.
🙂
@JohnSF:
At first I thought maybe Boris isn’t a complete moron. But now it looks as though he interrupted his vacation for nothing.
@Kathy:
Oh well, back to beach.
And count down the days to becoming Lord Boris.
*vomits*
I can’t bear the thought of listening to Trump bloviating for eight hours, but this is interesting:
http://www.npr.org/2022/10/23/1130712231/the-trump-tapes-reveal-much-about-bob-woodward-donald-trump
OTOH, I am experiencing level 11 schadenfreude from seeing the Johnsonites in politics/media being left looking complete effing idiots.
“But who on Earth could have possibly suspected Johnson was not reliable?”
Also, it shows that, dysfunctional as the party may be, at least some Conservatives (Sunak
+ Jake Berry?) are still capable of plotting a workably sneaky plot.
Which is something.
Because Sunak is going to need a lot of political skill to herd the cats and get a budget and related measures that are fiscally viable re. bond/currency market opinion.
What they actually need is a programme of tax increases and tax reforms to make the system logical and investment-friendly, while avoiding damaging spending cuts.
But the chances of the Conservative Party doing so are nil.
It will take a Labour government to properly address the overall tax/spending/policy tangle.
@wr:
I see your ability and desire to put words in people’s mouths haven’t changed.
Nowhere have I ever said that a word can never be replaced – I’ve been very clear that words should be replaced by the normal progress of language evolution and not by individuals or groups who have appointed themselves the arbiters of such things.
See my comment to Gustopher in the other thread. The short version is that putting words together in clever ways that become popularized is not the same as declaring that “death” and “taxes” are bad words that must be replaced with different words.
“Let’s go Brandon” and “Dark Biden” (and many more) are other examples similar to “death taxes.” We know what these phrases mean because of context, but these phrases are not redefining words or replacing words with alternatives.
@Beth:
Quite the contrary, I don’t want anyone to be the language police. It certainly shouldn’t be me, nor should it be anyone else. Similarly, no one can control how words affect people which is why a common understanding of meaning and context matters a great deal. And this is a two-way street.
As I’ve said many times now, language should and will evolve and change naturally based on the whole English-speaking population, not the predilections of the few.
As I’ve explained in the other threads, the “hard word” is doing stuff in the real world to change people’s minds and society. My view is this is very rarely accomplished from a keyboard. I do not think that creating new words to replace existing words and then trying to get people to adopt using those words as a society-changing strategy does that. In fact, I think it’s a waste of time.
@Andy: “I’ve been very clear that words should be replaced by the normal progress of language evolution and not by individuals or groups who have appointed themselves the arbiters of such things.”
How do you suppose the “normal process of language evolution” happens except by individuals and groups?
@Andy: “The short version is that putting words together in clever ways that become popularized is not the same as declaring that “death” and “taxes” are bad words that must be replaced with different words.”
No, it’s saying that “inheritance tax” is a phrase that must be replaced with different words. You are making these huge distinctions which turn out not to have any difference. Except maybe on the one hand it’s people you don’t like making the changes and on the other it’s people you consider to be of your tribe, and thus allowed.
Doctor Who is back! Tonight is the finale for Jodie Whittaker, who will regenerate into a new Doctor portrayed by Ncuti Gatwa, and if he’s half as good in Doctor Who as he was in Sex Education, Whovians are in for a real treat.
@CSK: That sooooo, 1990s. That’s 3 or 4 revisions of The Late Great Planet Earth-level old.
Not a criticism, just a comment. (And yes, at the time, he was. And then it became Al Gore. And then Obama, but they skipped over the guy who actually advocated for a National ID number to be tattooed on people’s palms during the Wah ahn Terrah. 🙁 )
@JohnSF: You’ll have to go to your own Dispensationalists (see: British Israelism, etc.) for the answer to that. Our good, Murkan Dispensationalists don’t follow events across the pond since before Maggie shuffled off this mortal coil.
@Mikey: On that much happier note (and without the arguing over who exactly are the language cops these days), I would like to announce that the Serpent Queen is everything I wanted it to be and more. I think I’m like 6 episodes in, and I used to read a bunch of history stuff about the de Medici’s back in the day, but Catherine….Dang, she was vicious, in a way that we should hope the Trump family never, ever figures out. 😛
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I thought Trump wanted a national i.d. card with a chip.
@wr:
You seem to have a special clairvoyance that allows you to peer through the interwebs and understand “my tribe” better than I do.
So tell us, what is my tribe exactly? What, exactly, am I “allowing” and for whom and for what reasons (nefarious I’m sure!)? If you’re going to claim secret knowledge about my political beliefs, and then insinuate about them in comments, don’t beat around the bush – here is your big chance to spill the beans.
As for me, I do not possess such powers. I do not know and do not care what tribe you are a part of. I don’t even give a shit about what motivates you or what your intentions are when you make an argument – as long as it’s an argument and not thinly disguised ad hominem.
You’ll note that it’s very rare for me to suggest that anyone here, including you, is making their points in bad faith, or is only doing so because of their “tribe.” I do admit I get too salty on occasion and step over this line, but I’d like to think I have a pretty good record of not engaging in such behavior because it’s bad behavior. It would just be nice if you would extend me the same courtesy, or at least try a bit harder.
@Mikey: Well I certainly did not expect THAT. Holy shit.
@Mikey: That good?! I’ve never really been a Doctor Who fan, but maybe I ought to!
@CSK: Dubya suggested it in the wake of 9/11. Evangelicals applauded his insight. It took new age whack jobs to remind them of the passages in Revelations about the mark of the beast.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I’m pretty sure Trump reiterated this.
@MarkedMan: I had a thought about the tale myself and wrote a song I titled, “Rome’s Smile.”
I have always been bothered by people who take their own lives. It is sad for sure but that doesn’t bother me as much as the people having to deal with the act that will never be the same. Seems to me a very selfish act to go through with, nonetheless.
In any event part of the lyrics go like this:
Maybe Romeo had it all wrong
N’ Juliet was just a spoiled child
Or maybe Juliet was fooled by Romeo’s smile ~ ©2006 RC Andrews