On 22 Feb 2006, at 12:56, Derek M Jones wrote:
Paola,
Richard Bornat wrote:
Dear Raymond. It's not offensive. It's funny.
Richard, I think your original message and follow-up are
indefensible. I was shocked to read the original message
and thought it was outrageous.
You may not know many Australians. In Australia 'bastard' is a
term of endearment ('you old bastard', for example; 'me and these
bastards', for another). That's why it's funny.
I would recommend "Cross-cultural pragmatics" by Anna Wierzbicka.
She is a Polish linguist (or a linguist who is Polish :-) living in
Australia.
She gives some excellent contrasts between Polish/English/Australian
cultural interactions. The point she makes at the start is that so
called "universal" norms for human interaction are actually just
Anglo-saxon norms, but because British/American academics write most
of the books and papers (and rule the world ;-) we get to call them
universal.
We are getting in deep here. I was just making a joke about agile
blockers, which is a phrase that seems to me to have an intrinsically
Australian ring. Read in in Dame Edna's voice, and see if it isn't.
Read my original email in Dame Edna's voice, and see if it isn't funny.
There's a line in a Peter Sellers sketch, on Songs for Swinging
Sellers, which talks (in an Irish voice) of 'po-faced bastards'. I,
not an Australian nor Irish either, have used the phrase freely ever
since. It has always seemed to be funny to me, as it was supposed to
be. It may be a little relevant here. I dunno (Mark Twain).
Richard Bornat
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