Archive for the ‘Social life’ Category

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Brief mention: legalversary

October 30, 2012

On Facebook today, Richard Jasper announced that it had been a year since he was legally married (in New York):

Oh, yeah! Happy 1-year “legally married” anniversary to Naoyuki Saito! Luv ya bunches! (We still maintain that our “real” anniversary is March 1, 2003, the date of the great “tuxedo shop” date!)

Note the distinction between their legal anniversary and their “real” anniversary (or simply anniversary, with no modifier), dates that for same-sex couples can be far separated in time.

Mike Reaser followed up with a similar story, but putting a compact name to the occasion:

We’re similar – our [his and Bryon Elliott’s] Anniversary is May 25, 1994, while our Legalversary is July 25, 2007.

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Portmanteaus, Social life | Leave a Comment »

Mapping the territory

September 29, 2012

Pretty much any place of any size has neighborhoods, areas (usually named) that are part of a local folk classification of places within the larger place — though the neighborhoods often take on some sort of more official status. Here, for example, is one map of the neighborhoods of San Francisco:

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Portmanteaus, Social life | Leave a Comment »

Insult crimes

September 14, 2012

At the top of the news this week are the demonstrations and assaults in Libya, Cairo, and Yemen over an anti-Muslim film. There are several threads to this story, but one of them has to do with the making of the film as a perceived insult crime. From my Pussy Riot posting:

Pussy Riot’s offense was an “insult crime”, disrespecting some public figure, religion, or political entity. They managed to pull off a trifecta (in the eyes of the authorities), disrespecting Vladimir Putin, Christianity (in the form of the Russian Orthodox Church), and the Russian state. And as a result  inciting others to follow them in their disrespect. So of course they had to be harshly punished. [This punishment might now be ameliorated. Stay tuned.]

In this case, the punishment was meted out through the Russian legal system. In the Innocence of Muslims case, as in the Danish cartoons events of a few years ago, punishment comes from angry mobs. And in the earlier controversy over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, the initial judgment came from a religious authority (in the form of a fatwa from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran), followed by mob violence and assassinations.

In each situation, the offense was against religion: disrespecting, insulting, a religion.

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Posted in Language and politics, Social life | 3 Comments »

Against or for

August 14, 2012

Passed on by Wipe Out Homophobia, this editorial cartoon by Dave Simpson of the Tulsa Tribune:

An argument that’s been made by many people on other occasions, in various formulations.

(more…)

Posted in Formulaic language, Gender and sexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Social life | 1 Comment »

Hate

August 10, 2012

A recent Scenes From a Multiverse:


A not-very oblique reference to the Chick-fil-A flap, turning on denying rights and hate.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Libfixes, Linguistics in the comics, Morphology, Social life, Technical and ordinary language | 3 Comments »

-core music

August 9, 2012

So, it starts with coverage of the latest crowd gunning-down (James Dao and Serge F. Kovaleski, “Music Style Is Called Supremacist Recruiting Tool”, NYT yesterday):

… the shootings [at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee] also shined a light on an obscure cultural scene that is helping keep the movement energized and providing it with a powerful tool for recruiting the young and disaffected: white power music, widely known as “hatecore.”

Yes, hatecore.

(more…)

Posted in Inflection, Music, Portmanteaus, Social life | 1 Comment »

More vintage comics

August 8, 2012

More from Samuel Warde’s “Vintage Politically Incorrect Comic Book Covers” site, divided into two large categories: covers with details of linguistic interest, and those of primarily social interest. (When a comic has features of both types, I’ll discuss it in the first group.)

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Social life, Taboo language and slurs | 1 Comment »

Dinner-table conversation

July 14, 2012

Today’s Zits:

Despite the touting of communication at the dinner-table as fostering good social relations for the kids, not all teenagers get with the program.

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Social life | 2 Comments »

Emotions are relational

June 18, 2012

Receiving a Ph.D. in Linguistics yesterday from Stanford: Tyler Schnoebelen, on the linguistics of affect.

Emotions are relational: Positioning and the use of affective linguistic resources

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Posted in Pragmatics, Social life, Sociolinguistics | 1 Comment »

Ota Benga and scientific racism

June 7, 2012

Continuing the story of Madison Grant, who helped to found the Bronx Zoo, from David Samuels’s essay “Wild Things: Animal nature, human racism, and the future of zoos” in the June 2012 Harper’s magazine: the sad tale of Ota Benga.

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Posted in History, Social life | Leave a Comment »

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