rusmeister
A Russified American Orthodox Chestertonian
- Dec 9, 2005
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GZ, there are plenty of things you are right about, and some even here, and I will note them. But there really are things you haven't considered as well. if this was a discussion about law enforcement, you might at least take the opinion and experience of a policeman seriously. If it were about the healthcare system, you might take what a doctor with long experience has to say. If it were about seminaries, you might listen to a former dean and concede that they really might know something about them. But if it's about language, suddenly, everybody's expertise is equally good, and career language teachers have nothing to offer, it seems.
Words DO imply things; that is their primary function. They have a definite history, just as people and nations do, and we call it "etymology". They are derived from something definite, from existing roots and meaninga, and serve definite purposes. A physicist, for example, discovering a new concept, does not name the new concept just anything, a random collection of sounds. He builds on existing concepts and roots. He does not call it "gurmuflklipny", but rather "trans-photonic waves" or whatever. He intends to imply that the phenomenon crosses some known boundary, and that it has something to do with light. You speak as if the word "gay" were invented out of the blue to describe people who experience homosexual desire. But that is not at all the case. The word has a definite history, and was taken and subverted by people with darkened minds for the specific purpose of falsifying, and this can be clearly shown. It had one fairly clear and agreed-upon meaning for over five hundred years of recorded English, derived from the Latin "gaudere" (rejoice, be glad) and "gaius" (merry, glad) as seen in the other Romance languages. There was no confusion about its meaning. There was usage - which did not last - as a euphemism for sexual promiscuity in the 1890's, forgotten within a few decades, and it is pretty solid evidence to me that this is so when I see the Flintstones singing about having "a gay old time", something that no one would have dared to do had there been any link of the word in the common mind with sexuality for a show suitable for children. Its modern usage as "homosexual" begins as a revival of the dead euphemistic usage of the 1890's as specifically for homosexuals (I'd have to write a whole separate article about the word "homosexual") by the academic elite snobs who sought the general approval of sexual "liberty" in their sexual revolution. I am old enough to remember both when the word was not used for such meaning and suddenly was.
As to implication, you can say that "for you" it does not imply an innate and natural state; I can only say that you are in a small minority now. You intend no such meaning, but the implication is nonetheless heard, so interpreted, by most of your listeners. The verb "to be" as a main verb is used as a linking verb; it is the linguistic equivalent of an "equals" sign in mathematics. It allows the use of one word to describe and limit another word. It says that "Joe=gay", and rightly or wrongly, that is what is communicated, whether you intend it or not.
Lastly, it is impossible to use a word while wholly denying its known historical meaning, certainly as long as that meaning is known. You cannot separate an implication, that is, avoid association, of that historical meaning of merriment from any use to which you might try to apply it, and the intellectual Heinleinites, or whatever you care to call the sexual libertines among Western intellectuals, understood this quite well, and so deliberately chose it, in the 1890's as in the 1960's, to mask the immorality they wanted to sell to society. "Gay" was a positive, cheerful and wholesome word, and that is exactly how they chose to package sodomy. You (broad, general plural "you") have taken the bait (unknowingly, especially the younger generation, who has never known the normal use of the word in their own experience) and are now on the hook. If you see that, you might try to extricate yourself.
So choice of words matters very much, GZ.
Again, I think you are right. The only thing you are wrong about is in thinking that language, choice of words, doesn't matter.
No, that's not it, and the argument, insofar as argument stands for reason as quarrel stands for division, is not over.
Words DO imply things; that is their primary function. They have a definite history, just as people and nations do, and we call it "etymology". They are derived from something definite, from existing roots and meaninga, and serve definite purposes. A physicist, for example, discovering a new concept, does not name the new concept just anything, a random collection of sounds. He builds on existing concepts and roots. He does not call it "gurmuflklipny", but rather "trans-photonic waves" or whatever. He intends to imply that the phenomenon crosses some known boundary, and that it has something to do with light. You speak as if the word "gay" were invented out of the blue to describe people who experience homosexual desire. But that is not at all the case. The word has a definite history, and was taken and subverted by people with darkened minds for the specific purpose of falsifying, and this can be clearly shown. It had one fairly clear and agreed-upon meaning for over five hundred years of recorded English, derived from the Latin "gaudere" (rejoice, be glad) and "gaius" (merry, glad) as seen in the other Romance languages. There was no confusion about its meaning. There was usage - which did not last - as a euphemism for sexual promiscuity in the 1890's, forgotten within a few decades, and it is pretty solid evidence to me that this is so when I see the Flintstones singing about having "a gay old time", something that no one would have dared to do had there been any link of the word in the common mind with sexuality for a show suitable for children. Its modern usage as "homosexual" begins as a revival of the dead euphemistic usage of the 1890's as specifically for homosexuals (I'd have to write a whole separate article about the word "homosexual") by the academic elite snobs who sought the general approval of sexual "liberty" in their sexual revolution. I am old enough to remember both when the word was not used for such meaning and suddenly was.
As to implication, you can say that "for you" it does not imply an innate and natural state; I can only say that you are in a small minority now. You intend no such meaning, but the implication is nonetheless heard, so interpreted, by most of your listeners. The verb "to be" as a main verb is used as a linking verb; it is the linguistic equivalent of an "equals" sign in mathematics. It allows the use of one word to describe and limit another word. It says that "Joe=gay", and rightly or wrongly, that is what is communicated, whether you intend it or not.
Lastly, it is impossible to use a word while wholly denying its known historical meaning, certainly as long as that meaning is known. You cannot separate an implication, that is, avoid association, of that historical meaning of merriment from any use to which you might try to apply it, and the intellectual Heinleinites, or whatever you care to call the sexual libertines among Western intellectuals, understood this quite well, and so deliberately chose it, in the 1890's as in the 1960's, to mask the immorality they wanted to sell to society. "Gay" was a positive, cheerful and wholesome word, and that is exactly how they chose to package sodomy. You (broad, general plural "you") have taken the bait (unknowingly, especially the younger generation, who has never known the normal use of the word in their own experience) and are now on the hook. If you see that, you might try to extricate yourself.
So choice of words matters very much, GZ.
Quite right.
Quite right. But again, we literally have to see correctly what you mean by "being straight" or "being gay", and maybe you do that effortlessly, being guided by Church teaching, I don't know. But I am quite sure that most do not, and that the spoken falsehood, consciously or unconsciously, which uses that equal sign to merriment, still wears away resistance like dripping water slowly wears away and shapes even a rock.
Again, I think you are right. The only thing you are wrong about is in thinking that language, choice of words, doesn't matter.
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