Category: Language Matters

Of Christograms and Political Correctness

Monterey Tom liked my 'Xmas' post and sends this:

Many Catholic artifacts related to worship are marked with the Roman letters IHS, which is a partial Latin transliteration of the Greek form of 'Jesus' and can also be read as an acronym for the Latin Iesus Hominum Salvator (Jesus Savior of Man). However, some have construed the IHS to be an acronym for "In this Sign", as in "In this sign you shall conquer." Some who were desirous of defending the judgements of the Obama administration used that last and incorrect notion to justify covering all of the IHS images at Georgetown University two years ago on the ground that Muslims would see  the IHS as a symbol of Christian aggression. My reaction to that  claim is that the event presented the U.S. government with what educators now call a "teachable moment." The only problem being, I suspect,  that no one in the White House gang actually knew the true meaning of the letters and probably shared the Muslim belief that the Crusades were wars of aggression aimed at forcefully converting the peace-loving Muslims and enriching the pope.

Although it is true that 'IHS' is, as Tom writes, "a partial Latin transliteration of of the Greek form of  'Jesus'," it is not true that it abbreviates Iesus Hominum Salvator, at least according to the Catholic Encyclopedia:  "IHS was sometimes wrongly understood as "Jesus Hominum (or Hierosolymae) Salvator", i.e. Jesus, the Saviour of men (or of Jerusalem=Hierosolyma)."

Being a pedant and a quibbler (but in the very  best senses of these terms!), I was all set to quibble with Monterey Tom's use of 'acronym' in connection with 'IHS.'  After all, you cannot pronounce it like a word in the way you can pronounce 'laser' and 'Gestapo' which are clearly acronyms.  But it all depends on how exactly we define 'acronym,' a question I'm not in the mood for.  The Wikipedia article looks good, however.  I am tempted to say that, while every acronym is an abbreviation, not every abbreviation is an acronym.  'IHS' is an abbreviation.

Acronym or not, 'IHS'  is a Christogram, and sometimes a monogram.  As it just now occurred in my text, 'IHS' is not a monogram but a mere abbreviation.  But again it depends on what exactly a monogram is.  According to the Wikipedia monogram article, "A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol."  Clear examples:

Chi-rhoIHS monogram

In the first monogram one can discern alpha, omega, chi, and rho.  The 'chi' as I said last post is the 'X' is 'Xmas.' 

From pedantry to political correctness and a bit of anti-Pee Cee polemic.  To think that 'IHS' abbreviates In hoc signes vincit shows a contemptible degree of ignorance, but what is worse is to worry about a possible Muslim misreading of the abbreviation.  Only a namby-pamby Pee-Cee dumbass liberal could sink to that level.  That is down there with the supine foolishness of those librul handwringers who wailed, in the wake of 9/11, "What did we do to offend them?"

If hypersensitive Muslims take offense at 'IHS,' that is their problem, not ours.  There is such a thing as taking  inappropriate offense.  See Of Black Holes and Political Correctness: If You Take Offense, is That My Fault?

As for Georgetown's caving to the White House demand, that is contemptible and disgusting, but so typical.  To paraphrase Dennis Prager, there is no one so spineless in all the world as a university administrator.  They should have said loud and clear "Absolutely not!"

Merry CHRISTmas!

‘Merry Xmas’

When I was eight years old or so and first took note of the phrase 'Merry Xmas,' my piety was offended by what I took to be the removal of 'Christ' from 'Christmas' only to be replaced by the universally recognized symbol for an unknown quantity, 'X.' But it wasn't long before I realized that the 'X' was merely a font-challenged typesetter's attempt at rendering the Greek Chi, an ancient abbreviation for 'Christ.' There is therefore nothing at all offensive in the expression 'Xmas.' Year after year, however, certain ignorant Christians who are old enough to know better make the mistake that I made when I was eight and corrected when I was ten.

It just now occurs to me that 'Xmas' may be susceptible of a quasi-Tillichian reading. Paul Tillich is famous for his benighted definition of 'God' as 'whatever is one's ultimate concern.' Well, take the 'X' in 'Xmas' as a variable the values of which are whatever one wants to celebrate at this time of year. So for some, 'Xmas' will amount to Solsticemas, for burglars Swagmas, for materialists Lootmas, for gluttons Foodmas, for inebriates Hoochmas, and for ACLU extremists Antichristianitymas.

A reader suggests some further constructions:

For those who love the capitol of the Czech Republic: Pragmas. For Dutch Reformed theologians of Frisian extraction who think Christmas is silly: Hoekemas. For Dutch Reformed philosophy professors of Frisian extraction who like preserves on their toast: Jellemas. For fans of older British sci-fi flicks: Quatermas. For those who buy every special seasonal periodical they can get their hands on: Magmas. One could probably multiply such examples ad nauseum, so I won't.

How could an ACLU bonehead object to 'Xmas' so construed? No doubt he would find a way.

A while back I quipped that "Aporeticians qua aporeticians do not celebrate Christmas. They celebrate Enigmas."  My man Hodges shot back:  "But they do celebrate 'X-mas'! (Or maybe they 'cerebrate' it?)"

Merry Chimas to all, and to all a good night.

‘It Depends on Who You Talk To’

Really?  Suppose some question is posed, some question concerning which there is an objective answer, regardless of how difficult it is to ascertain the answer.  For instance, Is the Social Security system  currently taking in more in payroll taxes than it is paying out in benefits? People have a knee-jerk tendency to say, 'It depends on who you talk to.'

But of course it doesn't.  What depends on who you talk to is the opinion of the one doing the talking. The answer to the question precisely does not depend on who you talk to.  It depends on the way the world is.

If you want to say that different people have different opinions on a certain (objective) question, then say that.  But don't say that it depends on who you talk to.  The latter is a phrase that thoughtful people ought to beware of. Don't let your sloppiness of speech aid and abet a sophomoric relativism.

Language matters.

Addendum 12/16.  A reader complains that the second sentence of the second paragraph should read, 'What depends on whom you talk to is  the opinion of the one doing the talking.'  That's right, except that,  for stylistic reasons, I was paralleling the street idiom on which I was commenting.  The problem with the street idiom is not the grammatical peccadillo it contains, but the conceptual confusion it embodies.

One ground of my dislike of editors is that the typical editor is a Besserwisser.  He knows better what you really want to say, or ought to say.  But he lacks the subtlety to realize that there are stylistic questions which may require the flouting of a grammatical rule. 

You may enjoy The Paltry Mentality of the Copy Editor.

When I insist that language matters, I am not insisting on the satisfaction of the grammatical punctilios of schoolmarms, but on avoiding expressions that impede clear thinking.

A Diversity Paradox for Immigration Expansionists

Liberals love 'diversity' even at the expense of such obvious goods as unity, assimilation, and comity. So it is something of a paradox that their refusal to take seriously the enforcement of immigration laws has led to a most undiverse stream of immigrants. "While espousing a fervent belief in diversity, immigrant advocates and their allies have presided over a policy regime that has produced one of the least diverse migration streams in our history." Here

In the once golden and great state of California, the Left's diversity fetishism has led to a letting-go of academics in the Cal State university system with a concomitant retention of administrative 'diversity officers.'   Unbelievable but true.  Heather McDonald reports and comments in Less Academics, More Narcissism. 

My only quibble is her failure to observe the distinction between 'less' and 'fewer.'  Use 'fewer' with count nouns; 'less' with mass terms.  I don't have less shovels than you; I have fewer shovels.  I need fewer shovels because I have less manure.

Typos!

Despite my 'due diligence,' typographical errors, though I strive to ferret them out, often go undetected on the day of publication.  All of yesterday's posts contain them.  So I will correct them now.  No, I don't use any SpellCheck utility.  That's like having a jackass of an editor looking over my shoulder, a miserable Besserwisser who thinks he knows what I am 'trying' to say and how I want to say it.  I'll say it my own way, damn you, and without your political correctness and school-marmish rules.

‘Surely’

A device of literary bluster.  When one is unsure about something, or sure about what one has no right to be sure about, one writes 'surely.'  Example:  "Vallicella links to Dinah Washington here. But surely Peggy Lee's version is better. A voice like no other, and the little piano break at 1:13 is exquisite."

I confess to using 'surely and 'of course' promiscuously.

Illiteracy at CNN

On CNN this morning, two subtitles included the phrases "Jobs death" and "Job's global influence."  The man's name is Steve Jobs. To form the possessive you must add an apostrophe and put it in the right place: "Jobs' death."

Can we blame this one on liberals too?  Is there perhaps something to the 'definition' of a liberal as a person who has never met a standard he didn't want to erode? 

Insanity About Race: The ‘Niggerhead’ Non-Issue

I watched The O'Reilly Factor last night.  In one segment Bill O'Reilly and Brit Hume were discussing some word once used by locals as the name of a hunting venue that is connected with some trouble Rick Perry is in.  But they were so gingerly tip-toeing around the topic that I couldn't figure out what the offensive word was.  Was it perhaps 'Coon's Hollow'?   I ran through various possibilities, trying to guess what they were too chicken and pee-cee to plainly state. Turns out the word is 'Niggerhead.' This was a  name that long before Perry's visit to the site had been painted over.

Philosophers make a distinction between use and mention.  It is one thing to use a word to refer to someone or something, and quite another to talk about, or mention, the word.  Boston is a city; 'Boston' is not: no word is a city.  'Boston' is disyllabic; Boston is not: no city is composed of two syllables.  Same with 'nigger.' It's a disyllabic word, an offensive word, a word that a decent person does not use.  I am not using it; I am mentioning it, talking about it.  Same with 'Niggerhead.'  That was the name that certain locals used for the hunting venue in question.  I am talking about that name, not using it.

The 'reasoning' of the race-baiters is apparently that since Perry visited a place that once bore the unofficial name 'Niggerhead,' that he is either a racist or 'racially insensitive' or something.

What I would like to point out to these nasty liberal dumbasses is that reasoning is not association of ideas. Almost any idea can be associated with any other.  In the febrile and mushy mind of many liberals 'niggardly' suggests 'nigger' so that anyone who uses the former must be a racist.  That's pretty stupid, don't you think?  But it's par for the course for a liberal.  Or how about 'denigrate'?  Does the use of that word embody a racial slur?

This is important.  A man lost his job because he used the perfectly legitimate English word 'niggardly.'  This is insane.  If you are decent person, you will do your bit to oppose the scurrilous insanity of the race-baiting Left.

For more on 'Niggerhead,' read Bad Day at Racist Rock.

‘Politicization,’ National Debt, and Global Warming

The Republicans were accused of 'politicizing' the debt crisis.  But how can you politicize what is  inherently political?  The debt in question is the debt of the federal government.  Since a government is a political entity, questions concerning federal debts are political questions.  As inherently political, such questions cannot be politicized.

If to hypostatize is to illicitly treat as a substance that which is not a substance, to politicize is to illictly treat as political what is not political.  Since governmental debt questions are 'already' political, they cannot be politicized.

This is not to say that 'politicize' does not have a legitimate use.

Questions about global warming are not inherently political.  They are questions about the earth and its climate.  Since the earth is not a political entity, these questions are not political, nor can they be made political.  It is therefore illict to politicize these questions as both conservatives and leftists do. Here are three global warming questions that are at the top of the list with respect to logical priority:

1. Is global warming (GW) occurring?

2. If yes to (1), is it naturally irreversible, or is it likely to reverse itself on its own?

3. If GW is occurring, and will not reverse itself on its own, to what extent is it anthropogenic, i.e., caused by human activity? This is the crucial empirical question. It is obviously distinct from (1) and (2). If there is naturally irreversible global warming, this is not to say that it is caused by human activity. It may or may not be.

None of these is a political question.  Therefore, it is illicit to 'politicize' them. 

Unfortunately, too much of present day 'science' is ideologically-infected.  Global warming alarmism is yet another ersatz religion for liberals.  See here.  Of course, I also condemn  those conservatives and libertarians whose knee-jerk rejection of GW is premised on hostitlity to any empirical finding that might lead to policies that limit the freedom of the market.

Why Typos Don’t Matter and the Musical Watershed That Was the ‘Fifties

An old friend from college, who has a Masters in English, regularly sends me stuff like this which I have no trouble understanding:

I trust that you ahve emelreis of going pacles with your presnts in cars before the days when the shapr devide came and deliniated clearly the music that our presnts like and the stuff that was aethetically unreachabable to many of thier generation. That was a haunting melody, The Waywared Wind, and it spoke of an experiencethat was really more coon to a ahlf generation away from the WWII generation. It was actually a toad bod for its time. Same year bourght us Fale Storms come Donw From YOur Ivorty Towe, the great pretender, and other romantic and innocent songs. But it also brought Hound Dog, which shocked the blazes out of my parents and all of their peers. It was even sexual. It was just animal. And, no it was not specificailly Negrol; it was worse it was p;oor white trash with side burns on a motocycle. It woldn't matterif the B Side of every platter ahd been one of those great gospel tunes those guys did; that stuff was not urban, mainline, Protestant stuff, but anekly backwoods stuff where there are stills and 13-year-olf brides, that the Northern boys had heard about in the WWII barracks and hoped that they would never have hear about again as they went back to either their Main Line P:rotestant or Catholic urban llive, whether they belonged to a country het or not or woudl have to wait a while, say until their GI Bill college educations started enabling them to play golf. But that was still a good summer of rthe last of the sweet songs that memebers of several gneratons could enjoy together

Talk about spontaneous prose! No grammatical hang-ups here.  My friend is an old Keroauc aficionado too, and this is one of the more entertaining of his missives.   Is it the approach of October that frees and inspires his pen?  My friend's a strange bird, and the above just came straight out of his febrile pate; he didn't compose it that way to prove that typographical errors are compatible with transmission of sense.

A curious watershed era it was in which  the sweet & tender was found cheek-by-jowl with the explicitly referenced raw hydraulics of sexual intercourse.  Take Little Richard, perhaps the chief exponent, worse than old Swivel Hips, of the devil's music.  "Good Golly Miss Molly," he screamed, "she sure likes to ball/When you're rockin' and a rollin' can't you hear yo mama call."  That was actually played on the radio in the '50s.  To ball is to have sex, and 'rock and roll' means the same thing.  And so there were Southern rednecks who wanted the stuff banned claiming that R & R music was "was bringing the white man down to the level of the nigger."

I maintain that the best R & R manages to marry the Dionysian thrust with the tender embrace, the animalic with the sweetly romantic.  The prime example?  Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman.  One thing I love about Orbison is that instead of saying 'Fuck!,' like some crude rap punk, he says, 'Mercy!'  Another little indicator of how right my friend is in his analysis above.

‘Experience’

The Mayo Clinic sent me a brochure containing the line, "Most patients begin their experience at the outpatient clinic." Now I don't know about you, but when I seek medical attention it is not an experience I want but treatment. If I could get the treatment without the experience, so much the better. 

Similarly, when I take the old buggy to Jiffy Lube it is not an automotive experience I am after but an oil change.

In both cases one pays for work to be done on a physical thing, not for experiences to be induced in the mind of the owner of the physical thing.

The aestheticism of the '60s and beyond, with its emphasis on doing things for the experience of doing them regardless of any real-world outcome positive or negative, is probably at the root of this overuse of  'experience.'

Why Exaggerate?

Why do people exaggerate in serious contexts? The logically prior question is: What is exaggeration, and how does it differ from lying, bullshitting, and metaphorical uses of language? A physician in a   radio broadcast one morning said, "You can't be too thin, too rich, or have too low a cholesterol level."

Note first that the medico was not joking but making a serious point. But he couched this serious point in a sentence which is plainly  false, indeed triply false. Since he had no intention of deceiving his audience, and since the point he was making (not merely trying to make) about cholesterol  is true, he was not lying. He was not bullshitting either since he was not trying to misrepresent himself as knowing something he does  not know or more than he knows.

Exaggeration bears some resemblance to metaphor. If I say, 'Sally is a block of ice,' I speak metaphorically or figuratively. What I say is literally false. But by saying it, I manage to convey to the listener some such proposition as that Sally is unemotional and (perhaps) sexually unresponsive. And when the sawbones exaggerated, though he said something literally false, he managed to convey to his audience the true proposition that total cholesterol levels for most of us need reducing.

But I wouldn't want to say that the good doctor was speaking metaphorically. I am merely pointing to a similarity between metaphor and exaggeration. The similarity may consist in the coming apart of   sentence meaning and speaker's meaning. In both examples, the sentence meaning is that of a falsehood. The speaker, however, using those  literally false sentences means something different from what the words 'by themselves' mean, and manages to convey truths to his hearers.

So I suggest that to understand exaggeration we need to understand metaphor so that we can delimit the former from the latter. But what exactly is metaphor? That's a tough one.

One more example.  I heard an intelligent-looking M.D. say on C-Span one moring that any exposure to sunlight is damaging.  Now that is an unconscionably stupid exaggeration.  Why say such a silly thing?  The sawbones must know that sunlight is a source of Vitamin D, and is good for other reasons as well.

So it is a puzzling phenomwenon.  Why do intelligent people exaggerate, and exaggerate wildly, when they must know that it diminishes their credibility? Is it perhaps a rhetorical technique to get people to pay attention to them?

In the case of the tobacco-wackos, who exaggerate the harmfulness of smoking and of sidestream smoke, their exaggerative distortions are readily understandable.  These types are leftists who hate corporations as such.  Their exaggeration is ideologically-driven.  I wonder whether they use Microsoft Word when they write their screeds.  Do they understand that Microsoft is –gasp! — a corporation?

Dennis Prager and Exaggeration

Dennis Prager warns against exaggeration.  He says, rightly, that to exaggerate is to lose credibility.  But he himself exaggerates when he refers to the Social Security sytem as a Ponzi scheme.  Obviously, it is not.  Admittedly, in its present configuration it is fiscally unsustainable like a Ponzi a scheme.  But it is not a Ponzi scheme for a very simple reason: it is not driven by fraudulent intent.  The liberals who set it  up and the liberals who defend its present configuration are by and large not crooks.  They had and have good intentions.  (Yes!)  Mitt Romney was right in last night's Tea Party debate to say that that it is "over the top" to refer to the SS sytem as a Ponzi scheme.

So why does a bright guy like Prager exaggerate in practically the same breath in which he warns against it?

A second example. Prager has an animus against 'studies.'  And with justification.  He regularly states that if a study confirms commonsense then it is unnecessary, and if it does not, then it is wrong.  As someone  who likes pithy formulations, I can see why he repeats this cute 'mantra.'  Unfortunately, it is an exaggeration.  Must I explain why? Not to the elite readers of this blog.

Prager has his acolytes Google his name.  (He addressed one of my posts on the air a while back.) So if he comes across this post, I want to say to him, "I love you, man; you do more for this country in one hour than I could do in a life time of scribbling.  I correct you because I love you."

On Redundancy

Redundancy is a stylistic flaw at worst. A noted chess writer advises, "You need to get psyched up within your own mind." One does indeed need to get psyched up to play well. But is it possible to get psyched   up in someone else's mind, or outside any mind? 

So the admonition is redundant and serves no purpose. Sometimes, however, redundancy serves the purpose of clarity. A noted writer on universals speaks of two particulars sharing a universal in common. This is a redundant formulation: if the universal is shared by the two particulars, then they have it in common. But the redundancy helps explain what 'share' means and thus serves clarity. So I offer this aphorism:

     Pleonasm in pursuit of precision is no logical sin, but at worst a stylistic peccadillo.