Linguistics

This is a special treat for all the linguists and language philosopher in da houze. It is time to compare and contrast the rhetorical styles of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Lady's First :

Highlight of the speech it's right there at the beginning :
I come tonight with a very full and I want especially to thank New Hampshire. Over the last week, I listened to you and in the process I found my own voice.

John Edwards is next :

Highlight from the last third of the speech:
I want to be clear to the 99% of Americans who have not yet had the chance to have their voices heard that I am in this race to the condition, that I intend to be the nominee of my party and I am in this race until we have actually restored the American Dream and strengthened and restored the middle class of America.

So I ask all of you here and all of you who can hear the sound of my voice that 99% whose voices have not been heard in this democracy to join us in this grassroots campaign to create the kind of America that all of us believe in.

A while ago, I wrote an essay called, “On the Nature and Meaning of “Bitch Slap,” ” in which I explained why a “bitch slap,” far from being heroic, is actually a profound act of cowardice.

I wrote that essay because I had observed that white and particularly white male “progressives” were fascinated with the term “bitch slap” and were using it constantly, like children repeating newly-discovered slang words for male and female genitalia. In fact, white (usually male) "progressives" have taken the term “bitch slap” entirely out of its originally limited underclass context and usage and are using it instead as a generally applicable synonym for “to castigate” and “to put in one’s place.” In so doing, they are celebrating violence against and subjugation of women, particularly Black women.

Now, Michael Bouldin of Culture Kitchen has visited one of my diaries there to accuse me of diary “pimping.” Merriams defines “pimping” as “solicit[ing] clients for a prostitute.” Merriams (Certainly, Michael does not intend to literally accuse me selling women’s flesh for profit.) But, is it not unacceptably and intentionally offensive for a white man to falsely accuse a Black lawyer of “pimping”? I’ll let readers be the judge of that. Blacks and many women will generally say it IS unacceptably offensive, while white men who regularly use the terms “bitch slap” and “diary pimping” (or simply “pimping”) will vociferously insist that they mean no color-aroused offense by these inherently linguistically color-bound insults.

Today's big stink is centered around a 4 minute piece on The Today Show, produced by Matt Lauer. Take a look :

In many of my presentations about blogging I have made the point that right now we are in the middle of a semantic warfare and that Google and blogs are the tools of semantic guerrilla warriors like me.

Here's the deal : Big Media was the tool of the powerful. When people talk about "Top-Down Politics" or hierarchical politics, it really doesn't start in Washington DC. Top-Down politics starts in New York City addresses like One Rockefeller Plaza and 229 West 43rd Street.

The magazines, TV shows and advertisments produced over at Madison Avenue, 6th Avenue (or Avenue of the Americas) and 10th and 11th Avenues have only one purpose : To influence "the demographics". It isn't a coincidence that politicos and advertisers use the same term to describe "the people" who end up shopping with their votes and voting with their wallets. The delusion is that Power in the United States is purveyed only by those who have control over what "the demographics" read, listen, wear, eat, like.

If you control desire/information/knowledge, the maxim used to go, then you control Power. So how are we to understand Matt Lauer's move?

Howard Kurtz on the linguistic missile :

I'm still working on the part where NBC gets more power if the conflict is viewed as a civil war. Because the network would be seen as galvanizing support for a pullout? All because of the use of the C-word? Is American support for the war so shaky that a single network's phraseology can cause that support to crumble?

[...]

I have no problem in using the phrase. But I don't think every news outlet needs to have an edict from on high.

I continue to believe that the day-to-day coverage of the carnage in Iraq is more important in terms of swaying public opinion than the label that the MSM chooses to slap on the conflict. Did most people think this wasn't a civil war before Lauer et al made the switch? I don't think so.