Inference in Language

Let's take 'victim' as an example. The word implies defeat yet any person who suffers from physical criminal outrage and lives should surely be called a 'survivor.' The word implies strength and courage - thr dead from criminal outrage are victims.

Then there is that awful 'cleansing' word - though used by the perpetrator it ought not be repeated in reports of it - ethnic hegemony - comes to mind but there must be better.

And what about 'Suffer?' The James Bible has Jesus saying 'Suffer little children to come unto me.' The English word then meant 'allow' - something has gone awry here. There remains a hint in the use of 'suffering' that somehow the sufferer tolerates or allows it - perhaps I am wrong on that yet afflicted is surely a better word.

Right. Steps down from the soap box..... we probably don't need a soap box thread, either

Quote :

There remains a hint in the use of 'suffering' that somehow the sufferer tolerates or allows it

Reflected in the expression 'on sufferance' I think, implying resignation tinged with resentment to a greater power.
'Victim' too although there is now an increasing resistance to that term in its use to suggest powerlessness and a particular state of mind, a continuing condition of being defined by something that has been perpetrated upon someone, hence the use of such expressions as 'Incest Survivors' rather than 'Victims'.

I am so pleased that the word survivors is coming into use, ferv.

I'd like to have a whinge about the word decimate. Again on the radio today there was a person telling us how she was decimated because such and such had happened.

Surely an impossibility to decimate one person unless something had happened to a group of 10 people and she was the one unlucky enough to be punished?

A further word whinge - ferv used two words that she heard archaeolgists use in discussing 'style' that I have never heard of. I packed my dictionary yesterday. EXperts tend to air words like that. Adding 'ology' to straight forward words like method annoy me...... I came acros a beaut which when unravelled was a great new educational discovery about shared reading experience. It meant reading round the class when every one had the same book!!! Ain't progress a wonderful thing!

I think methodology has quite a long pedigree in use in research work, Priscilla. And other similar words work as useful jargon for their industries even if they are awkward outside it.

I don't actually like calling people victims or survivors, or putting labels on people generally. Victims does downgrade people to the status of someone to be felt sorry for, and for reasons I don't quite understand people hate to be pitied even though it is a quite natural feeling. But survivors bothers me as sounding a little Newspeak. Also when it applies to people who have been subjected to sexual abuse I don't know that it is quite accurate. People may die of physical abuse, but not usually of sexual abuse (at the moment, however, here we have a criminal case of a man from Ghana accused of sexually abusing his five-year-old niece leading to her death. This is the second time this man has been tried - he was acquitted the first time, but the police charged him again, most unusually.).

I know it is cumbersome to have to write longer phrases to describe what you want to, but it is so easy to dehumanise people when you lump them all together as victims, or monsters, or criminals, or survivors, or saints, or politicians, or anything really. And give them all class qualities instead their individual characteristics.

I note that in the now suspended trial that the awful phrase 'ethnic cleansing' has been aired. There surely must be a better way of describing the dreadful policy without using the perpetrator's phrase. Or should I say phrasology? If I am to keep up, that is.

Nah! Too far behind to even try.

Your perpetrators in turn stole the phrase from onlookers of another vile little pogrom dressed up to look like legitimate warfare. When the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis went at it hammer-and-tongs back in 1988 in an attempt to wipe each other off the planet a rather bemused Soviet official coined the phrase "etnicheskoye chish cheniye" for what they were doing to each other. He was attempting to describe his ironic disgust of what he had witnessed. It was the Serbs who failed to pick up on the irony when they adopted the phrase to describe their own actions. If it is now rather belatedly being transferred back to its ironically critical roots then well and good, I say.

Any chance of Azerbaijan reviving its past genocidal tendencies next week some time before around 7pm on Saturday? Or is the Eurovision simply a continuation perhaps of their old policies by more sadistic means?

Eurovision - now there's another nasty word for an even worse event. Perhaps 37C n the shade and 45 in my airless store room is preferable after all.

nordmann wrote:

Any chance of Azerbaijan reviving its past genocidal tendencies next week some time before around 7pm on Saturday? Or is the Eurovision simply a continuation perhaps of their old policies by more sadistic means?

No need, Stranglebert is being sent over. His hairspray will surely affixiate all and sundry.

This isn't a whinge or a whine - just something that happened.  Yesterday I decided to look for some more part-time work to bolster my pension.  I have had some people roll their eyes at me because I do U3A courses and because I do the odd bit of work.  "You want to put your feet up duck".  Duck will make up her own mind what she wants to do and doesn't like being patronised (though I keep my resentment internalised).  Yesterday Duck found an advert on Craig's List for some part-time secretarial work - one of the stipulations was that the person who got the job would have to be prepared to wear thigh-high black boots.  Duck decided that being in her 60s she would hardly fit that job and did not bother to apply.  Of course the ironic thing is that in December 2010 a friend put in a good word for Duck for a part-time job but they wanted someone who could start right away and Duck had fallen in the snow and ice that year and sprained her right thigh quite badly and was under doctor's orders to rest for at least six weeks.  I thought the thigh-high boots advert was quite funny - is it the modern equivalent of "French lessons on the piano"?

Priscilla wrote:

Inference in Language

Let's take 'victim' as an example. The word implies defeat yet any person who suffers from physical criminal outrage and lives should surely be called a 'survivor.' The word implies strength and courage - thr dead from criminal outrage are victims.

Then there is that awful 'cleansing' word - though used by the perpetrator it ought not be repeated in reports of it - ethnic hegemony - comes to mind but there must be better.

And what about 'Suffer?'   The James Bible has Jesus saying 'Suffer little children to come unto me.'  The English word then meant 'allow' - something has gone awry here. There remains a hint in the use of 'suffering'  that somehow the sufferer tolerates or allows it - perhaps I am wrong on that yet afflicted is surely a better word.

Right. Steps down from the soap box..... we probably don't need a soap box thread, either

Priscilla,

"The word implies defeat yet any person who suffers from physical criminal outrage and lives should surely be called a 'survivor.' The word implies strength and courage -"
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=victim

I don't quite understand. For me it represents also in French (victime) the cruel horror of undergoing an act against one's will. In Dutch and in German the original meaning is still in the word "slachtoffer" (offering that has been slaughtered) and the German "Opfer".
No for me one need all the accusation of the perpetrator who has done his evil act. And it implies also the alarm and the anger not able to react to the perpetrator. I sometimes try to imagine my reaction (I know I am a man but also men...) from being raped (in French and Dutch the word is even starker: "violation" and "verkrachting")...one is not able to resist and has to undergo...all the humiliation of not be able to use his free will...


"ethnic cleansing" In my opinion quite the appropriate word...it nails exactly the perpetrators to the pillory...
They, the in their own eyes the "pure", "clean"! the in their eyes "impure" elements in their asocial nationalistic or religious righteous views from the common territory...just discussing the Yougoslavian civil war for the moment on another board and quite new actual catastrophies spring also to mind...yes "clean" is in my opinion one of the best words...


And "suffer"
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/suffer

All the same as the above "victim" from the Latin "sub ferre" undergo, bear (ferre) under (sub) a load, a burden...
The evil of someone, who oblige you to undergo something against your free will...and I know Nordmann will say and a "punishment" is then also a suffering...? Yes, but then we are back to the morality of a given community...at a given time era...

Kind regards and with esteem from your old acquaintance,

Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

This isn't a whinge or a whine - just something that happened.  Yesterday I decided to look for some more part-time work to bolster my pension.  I have had some people roll their eyes at me because I do U3A courses and because I do the odd bit of work.  "You want to put your feet up duck".  Duck will make up her own mind what she wants to do and doesn't like being patronised (though I keep my resentment internalised).  Yesterday Duck found an advert on Craig's List for some part-time secretarial work - one of the stipulations was that the person who got the job would have to be prepared to wear thigh-high black boots.  Duck decided that being in her 60s she would hardly fit that job and did not bother to apply.  Of course the ironic thing is that in December 2010 a friend put in a good word for Duck for a part-time job but they wanted someone who could start right away and Duck had fallen in the snow and ice that year and sprained her right thigh quite badly and was under doctor's orders to rest for at least six weeks.  I thought the thigh-high boots advert was quite funny - is it the modern equivalent of "French lessons on the piano"?

LIR,
" that the person who got the job would have to be prepared to wear thigh-high black boots"

That's quite a requirement...
https://www.google.be/search?q=thigh+high+black+boots&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=_PmyU7PDKe304QTS7IH4CA&ved=0CB0QsAQ&biw=1200&bih=731

" I thought the thigh-high boots advert was quite funny - is it the modern equivalent of "French lessons on the piano"?
As we in this thread are discussing inference in language I put "French lessons on the piano" in Google bu I got only courses in French and advertisements for lessons on piano...
LIR, as I am over my seventies you can call a cat a cat...what really do you mean...supposing it is slang and making all kind of wild fantasies...
LIR, reality is sometimes more real than a novel...
When we started to rent our latest appartments...one lady was phoning to ask how many rooms that there were in the whole appartment building...she said she had some further in the street also a mansion with "girls" and that she would pay a fair price and all the damages would be restored by contract...

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

PS: BTW is Gil in vacancies...?

Paul R, nowadays ladies who are members of the "world's oldest profession" tend to advertise themselves as "masseuses" or "escorts".  In the olden days (or so I've heard) they would sometimes advertise "French lessons" or "piano lessons" as a code for what they were really selling.  "French lessons on the piano" was an exaggeration on my part. Both expressions would not have been advertised at once.  Yes, I think the "gentleman" who placed the ad must have been looking for something more than just a part-time secretary - probably he was not even looking for a secretary at all, but that the advertisement was a coded message for looking for a lady friend (I would imagine a young one).  You are right that real life can sometimes surpass fiction.  I must have led a very sheltered life but I have never to my knowledge met a Dominatrix in real life but when a Dominatrix is depicted in a TV show (say, a police procedural programme) they are often portrayed as wearing high boots with high heels.

Capito, LIR...esteem as always...Paul.