Another mishearing
🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tier tiger for ultimate May, the gateway to the sultry rabbits of summer, those promiscuous creatures of the great queen, Juno (is it hot in here?)
A follow-up to my 5/29 posting “Three mishearings”, with yet another surprising slip of the ear, eco-terrorist heard as ego-terrorist: model utterance with /k/, variant with /g/, differing minimally, in voicing — setting up a relationship that can be exploited in an imperfect pun, a possibility that’s been ostentatiously realized in writing by Wayne Bradshaw
My mishearing. From a re-play yesterday of the American tv show NCIS: S1 E7 “Sub Rosa” (1st aired 11/18/03):
He’s definitely an eco-terrorist
Which I heard as
He’s definitely an ego-terrorist<
(definitely a surprise). But the minimal /k – g/ relationship is available for half-rhyme (bigger or trigger half-rhyming with liquor or quicker: primed by liquor / his eyes got bigger) or an imperfect pun (Have you heard about Roy Rogers’ stuffed horse, Tricker? — playing on Trigger). (The examples are inventions of my own, because though the /k – g/ pairing is possible it’s infrequent; of the voiceless – voiced pairings in half-rhyming and imperfect puns, only the alveolars, /t – d/ and /s – z/, are common.)
(My original paper, with some analysis of the types of half-rhyme, plenty of examples, and rough statistics on occurrence: “This rock and roll has got to stop”, on rhyme in rock music (Chicago Linguistic Society, 1976).)
ego-terrorism as a learnèd (imperfect) pun. “Ego-terrorism: The benefit of an anarcho-psychological perspective of terrorism”, a chapter in Australian scholar of comparative literature Wayne Bradshaw’s Metaphysical Sociology [: On the Work of John Carroll] (Routledge, 2018):
Abstract: This chapter discusses the importance of developing an explicitly metaphysical approach to the study of terrorism. Taking its cue from John Carroll’s Break-Out from the Crystal Palace and Terror: A Meditation on the Meaning of September 11, the chapter sheds light on the character of the “terrorist persona” as a means of understanding how individuals become capable of perpetrating crimes of horrific and indiscriminate violence. Identifying a persona that seeks self-realisation through violent overthrow of alienating moral and political institutions, the chapter identifies a specific kind of terrorism that finds its origins in a misreading of Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche.
From the University of Tasmania site on Wayne Bradshaw:
Dr Wayne Bradshaw is an Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Humanities with degrees in both English and Politics. His primary research focus is the historical influence of radical political philosophy on trends in literature.
From Wikipedia on the relevant John Carroll (there are a number of them):
John Carroll is … an emeritus professor of sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne.
Carroll has degrees in mathematics, economics, and sociology from the University of Melbourne (BA Hons, 1962–1965) and Cambridge University in England (MA, 1966–1968; PhD).
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