Our 'Love Affair' With Euphemisms - All Things Considered

Our 'Love Affair' With Euphemisms

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February 7, 2011

In Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms, author Ralph Keyes explores the power of words and our power over them. Keyes tells host Robert Siegel he's always been interested in the intersection of language and culture, and how the way people talk reflects changes in society. Nothing, he says, does that more than euphemisms.

Related NPR Stories

'Pushing Up Daisies' And Our Passion For Euphemisms Dec. 14, 2010

Science Friday: Jonathon Keats and "Virtual Words"

via sciencefriday.com

"Do you ever 'tweet?' Does your texting vocabulary include the ultra-brief, but oh-so-useful, 'k?' In this segment, we'll talk with Jonathon Keats, author of the book 'Virtual Words.' Keats, a conceptual artist, also pens Wired's 'Jargon Watch' column. We'll talk about how the rapid pace of technology is creating new words and how new ideas drive new language."

Guests:
Jonathon Keats
Author, Wired magazine's "Jargon Watch"
Virtual Words (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Conceptual Artist
San Francisco, California

download mp3: http://public.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/totn/2010/12/20101224_totn_01.mp3

On Language and Living

A scene from Godard's "Vivre Sa Vie."

NY Times: John Cage's Piece 4' 33"

December 14, 2010, 12:06 PM

Just in Time for the Holidays: Cage Against the Machine

By BEN SISARIO

The musicians crowded into a London studio, dozens of them, to record a song for charity. Waiting for their cue, they held guitars and drumsticks, and stood at attention by the microphones. Then the producer gave the count: “Quiet in the studio: one, two …”

And then silence. Exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds of it.

The musicians, including British pop stars like Billy Bragg, the electronic act Orbital and the band Enter Shikari, were there to perform John Cage’s famous tribute to nothingness, “4’ 33”,” as part of a project cheekily called Cage Against the Machine whose goal is to send an unlikely song to the top of the British pop chart at Christmas.

Last year a Facebook campaign helped the anarchist American rock band Rage Against the Machine reach No. 1 with “Killing in the Name,” and now another Web effort is behind Cage Against the Machine. A single is available on iTunes (you can even buy an EP with seven “remixes” of studio chatter and other random sounds), with proceeds going to five British charities.

“Music is made up of more than just formal notes and arrangements,” Julie Hilliard, one of the organizers, told the musicians as they prepared for their silent take. “Here today we are doing something special. We are stopping and appreciating the space between things, the unintentional sounds that make up our world.”

A video of the recording sessions can be seen above or here on YouTube.

Poetry and Philosophy at the Crossroads

http://www.nhinet.org/ricci20-1.pdf

Perfect Language

I just remembered there was a quote I read that reminded me of our class. I don't remember who said the quote or exactly how it went, I think it was Peter Benchly - author of Jaws. Anyway whoever it was, they were talking about language and they said something to the effect of the following:

I have terrific understanding of language and its power and so I say nothing...

Alex's Dream

This is something that I made a while ago. It's an interpretation of what he said about his dream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK2Ms_U3PqY

Discovering one's own language: another throught

From "The Clouds Should Know Me by Now" (the Buddhist poet monks of China from the past 700 years)

...Maybe we're in a position now to see that this is what's so compelling in 1500 years of Ch'an poetry. The best poems push no doctrine or dogma, there's no jingo, no proselytizing. The Buddhism is carefully hidden away in tight five- and seven-syllable lines. (This metric pattern, according to Yunte Huang, "is intimately related to the translations from the Sanskrit Buddhist texts. It was the encounter with an alphabetical language--Sanskrit--that made the Chines realize for the first time that a Chinese character was pronounced by a combination of vowel and consonant.")

This came back to me from having recently read it, after Alex told of finding Sicilian to be a written language--his own language, complete.

Ch'i chi (864-937 C.E.)

Don't dye it, don't pull it out,

let it grow all over your head.

No medicine can stop the whiteness,

the blackness won't last out the fall.

Lay your head on a quiet pillow, hear the cicadas,

idly incline it to watch the waters flow--

The reason we can't rise to this broader view of life

is because, white hair, you grieve us so!

So much of the poetry takes me to a deeper tranquil and very awake place. But this one shows the abiding sense of humor that surfaces in many of the poets' work. Wanted to share.

Def Poetry Jam - Alicia Keys - POW

I have been a fan of Def Jam poetry for awhile. I can't help but think of what Alex did on Wednesday and it ties into what Alicia Keys says in this session of Def Jam Poetry. Here is Alex, trying to go above and beyond language just as our earlier readings have suggested. Here is Alicia, speaking of the prisoner she is to words as well. But as Alex, at least, makes the effort to rise above the convention and restrictions we are flooded with, Alicia speaks of a character that finds defeat through the standard and norms of society. This character does not want to offend, does not want to turn anyone away, but in doing so she builds the bars that make her a prisoner. Alex, though some of us may not understand how it all works, does not build any bars or forge any chains. Alex is a guerrilla in the revolution...

Productive Questions/Assignments

Part 1: Essay

Due by noon on December 13

Write about at least 3 specific works by Alex Caldiero (at least one each from the performance, the film, and the book) in the context of at least 3 specific works we read and discussed in the sections called "the shape of the shapeless: undermining the limits of language" and “the first casualty of war is language” – at least one work from each section.  About 6-7 pages.

Draw on notes you have taken during discussions of the texts in class, read the authors’ works closely and carefully, and think rigorously and creatively about the questions you are answering. Don’t write personally about the questions. Don’t simply associate other things with what you read. Instead, use passages from the texts to establish patterns of ideas. What is the author saying in these passages and how do they relate to passages from other texts and authors? That’s your most basic task, to lay out what the text means. Do not stop with paraphrase. If you do, you’re just repeating. Your job is to analyze what you find/what you read, to make sense of the ideas, to find patterns in the texts that you can show to have meaning related to the meanings of other texts.

Part 2: Prepare your Notes and Scraps for evaluation.

On the same day, December 13, hand in your notes/scraps. Include:

1.  All the notes you have taken in the second half of the class, notes you have made about (on) each of the texts we have read and discussed, notes you have written to others about this material, all other notes taken or written or drawn for or about this class.

2. All the scraps you have collected, references to the various topics, complementary materials, essays, articles, etchings, clippings and so on related to language in general and specifically, in short: the rich collection of materials you have made in response to our readings and discussions. If you have posted to the Languagescraps blog, note what you have posted.