An Elephant of One's Own

 No, not Gillette (that's a whole other article), but George Gillett, who wrote this . Having seen the article cited in Twitter, and mistakenly believing it to be recent (big fail - the date is right there), I asked some of my students to write a critical analysis, and being the responsible teacher I am, decided I ought to come up with one of my own for illustrative purposes. This was done late last night and could do with a great deal of polishing, not to mention citations. Provided without warranty, in case anyone finds it useful or at least cautionary. Copy-paste from Word. CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ARTICLE ‘We shouldn’t fight for “gender equality”. We should fight to abolish gender’ (George Gillett, New Statesman, 2014) "[T]he end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally." (Fires...

 As they reached the corner of the narrow, gently sloping street and stepped off it onto the low-walled Victorian market forecourt that served as a sea prospect and alternative route to the High Street, Berthold leaned on Grassa's arm, unconsciously drawing her close as he tried to arrange some vague plans for the rest of the holiday fortnight in his mind while simultaneously sharing them out loud with her, confident of her approval or at least her sympathetic understanding.  "My mother," he told her, "said this morning that she didn't need to go back to London just yet, so I thought..." He paused for a moment, feeling a twinge of guilt as he reflected on how he'd left his mother aimlessly pottering in the house all day for, what, three days now, while he'd been out joyously gallivanting round town with Grassa. "So I thought, well, we could maybe take her out tomorrow, bring her for a walk around town." Grassa looked up at him, a glance of ...

  I’m writing this partly in response to Kit Wilson’s article  in Areo on The Woke Left’s Self-contradictory Ideas about Language , and partly just to air a few ideas of my own. I would welcome feedback from the author himself, if he has time and inclination, but also from anyone who has an opinion on the topics alluded to, in particular the problem of language policing. While I agree with Wilson that the “woke” views he describes are clearly self-contradictory and self-defeating, I find the alternative outlook he puts forward to be, if not self-contradictory, at least naïve, simplistic and unhelpful. I suspect I may be misreading him, and would be glad of correction if so: but even if I am, I think the simplistic view of language that I perhaps mistakenly read into his comments deserves to be opposed on the basis it is far too often held up as a banner, especially by respectable conservative commentators who ought to know better. In summary, the author attributes to “th...

One of these days I'll write an essay. It would help if I was asked for one - I love the idea of writing something that stands a chance of being read. For now, though, the usual: random thoughts randomly snuffled over. Long form tweeting into the awaiting void. I've been feeling a bit upset and a bit dispirited after seeing huge numbers of people here in Guayaquil attending protest demonstrations against a recent government decision to allow same-sex marriage. If I wanted to, I could follow the controversy at first hand on Twitter - I've a shrewd idea which accounts I would have to resub to - but from the little that filters through to my stagnant, brackish TL I know what I'd find: an unkindness of ad hominems, lots of religious sloganizing, the odd etymological fallacy ( matri-mon-ium! it's depressing how often that comes up), the odd red herring and slippery slope (but think of the children ! do you really want them turned into cavorting drag queens?) and, rang...

I've blogged elsewhere on semantic degeneration (to adopt the Bloomfield typology ). It's a depressing fact of life: just as the quaint sweetshop you used to buy pontefract cakes or wine gums and marbles at on the way home from school closes down, sooner or later, to make way for a Tesco or Asda, so the unique, precise meaning you used to ascribe to a particular word ceases trading, to be replaced by a vaguer, bewilderingly stupid meaning under which the formerly low-frequency word suddenly acquires a new customer base. It's "progress", of course, and unimpeachably democratic, so we'd be dumb to oppose it or try to turn the clock back. All we can allow ourselves in conscience (especially if we are linguists) is to sulk, and not like it, and be all crotchety and passive-aggressive about it. So, on that note and in no particular order, here goes. "Avatar". I never saw the movie, but well before it appeared I was using the word in my newsgroup posts t...

I've talked about and narrated dreams elsewhere in this blog. If I don't do so more often, it's simply because I rarely remember them. Experience has taught me that if I cared to remember more, I would have to pay 150 bucks a month for biweekly appointments with a floor-lamp , and I don't have that kind of money. So it's only ever going to be the one or two per year I actually remember, owing to fortuitous circumstances like waking up at the end of it and then staying awake long enough to retell it to myself a couple of times, to fix it in my mind. But I certainly wish I could remember more. Dreams are interesting. As I always say, though, it's not what happened in the dream, it's how you felt about what happened. That's generally the most interesting aspect. In this case, as usual, the beginning of the dream is lost to me. At the point I begin to remember, I am alone, walking along a road in Durán, near where I used to live, though later it turns ou...

Back in January I rejoined Twitter after several blissful years of absence. Damn fool notion: it's like that thing they do here in the Andes, getting yourself whipped with nettles by village elders to "purify" yourself. Don't know if I want to be limpiado that much, not at my age, or at least, not by anyone who doesn't look good in stilettos. Still, if there's one thing you can say for the platform, it provides you with a daily dripfeed of gratuitous controversy: National pride has evil consequences. Prefer pride in humanity. German pride gave us Hitler, American pride gave us Trump, British pride gave us Brexit. If you must have pride, be proud that Homo sapiens could produce a Darwin, Shakespeare, Mandela, Einstein, Beethoven. — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) March 30, 2019 Thus Dawkins. The popular response to the tweet was, as far as I cared to read, "how can you mention Brexit in the same breath as Hitler": fair enough, but let's be...