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First Charges Filed in Mueller Investigation

wakephan09 said:
You're just making fun of yourself, my man. You should check out this thing called HAMLET
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Not to derail (yet again on this topic), but it is understood that in Hamlet the phrase turns on the culpability of the one who utters is, not the object of the phrase. However, with the dynamic nature of language, at what point does the common idiomatic understanding of the phrase become its actual meaning?
 
IamThunderbolt said:
Not to derail (yet again on this topic), but it is understood that in Hamlet the phrase turns on the culpability of the one who utters is, not the object of the phrase. However, with the dynamic nature of language, at what point does the common idiomatic understanding of the phrase become its actual meaning?
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A very good question, and probably worth chatting about at length in another thread. Also, very well put. We should make a bot that auto-posts that every time somebody is acting Gerty on these here rjkarl boards.

My boards policy: it's something about the nonsense appropriation of Elizabethan baby-talk that bothers me. Watching otherwise smart people use the word "methinks" to try and look clever is silly. My personal crusade against the Cervantes phrase almost eradicated it for a short time. Ultimately, you could (accurately) say I was "tilting at windmills."

My real, sort of authoritative opinion: There are plenty of other idiomatic phrases that have dramatically changed senses (and that's cool, whatever) but it matters especially in cases where they directly reference a literary document that you could Google in five seconds. It's bad reading more than it is the "dynamic nature of language". Also, this is only partially about *language* -- the misunderstanding of the word "protest" is only half the problem.

This isn't a perfect analogy (for more than one reason), but when people commonly quote a bible verse more or less correctly but completely misinterpret it, do you think we should just change the "common idiomatic understanding" of the verse because of the dynamic nature of language? Why not? Why should this case be any different?

My guess, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that you spend much of your time in the pulpit trying to convince people of the *ideas* undergirding the content of the bible, in part to show how others' misuse of the words themselves means that they are also, more importantly, misunderstanding the meaning behind them.
 
and here we all were, thinking sailor or perhaps junebug was king of insufferable mountain
 
Junebug said:
For everyone other than pedants like wakephan, it happened a long time ago.
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This is good, really, as you're perhaps one of our community's proudest pedants.

Truth is, I'm not generally pedantic. I'm actually very specific about what kinds of things I correct, and most of them via passive-aggressive jokes.

The way I see these boards is that we have an incredible variety of people boasting a number of different expertises, and I come here to learn new shit. I know the bird guy, the tax guy, the law nerds, the preachers, the real estate dudes, the burned out music librarian, the sociologist, the independent writer and on and on. We come here to share what we do and what we know. I'm the dude who thinks about history and lit and sometimes I offer really hasty and poorly-written responses to things that catch my fancy. If you don't like it, block me, I guess. But I'm not really trying to show off or impress people or whatever. I just want to laugh at morons trying to act smart. If we're not here for that, why are we here?
 
I'm just here to advocate for the saving of Danny Manning's job and get distracted by other stuff.
 
BiffTannen said:
I'm just here to advocate for the saving of Danny Manning's job and get distracted by other stuff.
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I'm not really here for the distraction. I like engaging with people and ideas.

ITC is just a regretful and cynical micro-old. We remember what you used to be, buddy! You don't have to spend all your time hating the world!
 
Ok, back to discussing the treasonous crimes committed by the President of the United States.
 
wakephan09 said:
I'm not really here for the distraction. I like engaging with people and ideas.

ITC is just a regretful and cynical micro-old. We remember what you used to be, buddy! You don't have to spend all your time hating the world!
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methinks phan doth protestest too mucheth about how chill he "actually" is
 
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