Tom: You might find George Lakoff to be an interesting kind of guy for a
linguist / semanticist. Try these links:
specific paper: http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html
General info: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~rsauzier/Lakoff.html
Tom Walker wrote:
> All this talk about "appropriating language" makes me quesy. What is this
> talk? Some kind of politically correct focus group grope?
>
> My almost-five year old has a video out from the library about wheat
> (extremely well done video series, by the way) and in the video they give a
> short recap of the story of Joseph from the Bible. You could have knocked me
> over with a feather. That dumb little story is the foundation myth of the
> economic-administrative state.
>
> The story's got the whole cast of characters: family (dysfunctional, if you
> ask me), religion (starring the spooky "I AM" guy) and business cycles
> (seven fat years followed by seven lean years). It also features the occult
> (dream interpretation), fashion (Joe's coat of many colours) and even a sex
> scandal (he didn't).
>
> If the preceeding sounds anything like your daily newspaper, don't just
> write it off as coincidence. Anyway, getting back to Jos. and his bros., I
> looked up the story in a copy of the King James version I keep around for
> reference purposes.
>
> For some reason, that particular story wasn't one that had made an enduring
> impression on me (like Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, and Jonah and the
> whale). Reading it -- and noting it's position at the end of the book of
> Genesis -- made me think about what it is that "gets created" in Genesis.
> Hands up all those of you who think it's "the world, in seven days".
>
> Ha! That's just "setting the scene" during the opening credits.
>
> Hands up all those who think it's "the state"?
>
> Here's my speculation about why the right has such success. It's not that
> they "appropriate" any language. It's that they share and identify with a
> mythic version of the state that is deeply engrained in the culture. Deeply.
> They don't appropriate the language, they SPEAK it. The left may criticize
> the myth of state, but criticism isn't unified and doesn't tell it's own
> story. So, what is to be done?
>
> Just criticizing or denouncing the myth is not enough. Making up a new myth
> (or two or three) won't work. My own preference is for getting inside the
> poetics of the myth and producing emancipatory versions -- stretching the
> myth. By the way, this is what I would claim Herman Melville did and what
> Thomas Paine did, to cite just two examples.
>
> Meanwhile, have a look at that Joseph story. It's bizarre.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tom Walker
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