Word of the day: discursive

Bally-hoo interwebbians!

Ok, ok, ok, I have been startled out of a hectic-ness driven blog recession lately, but tonight instead of cutting new kitchen shelves or watching that extra episode of The Office, I decided to get a few random tasks out of the way. Having now upgraded roundcube and wordpress, I turn my attentions to a new word that a bonne amie turned me onto a bit ago. Whilst I didn’t have a specific quote in mind, or at least one didn’t come attached to the word, I did trip upon a blog called Didactic Discursive Diatribe
whose alliterative title is endearing, and many, many examples of people using it incorrectly. Which is actually quite an amazing feat for a word which is seemingly its own antonym:

discursive

1. Covering a wide field of subjects; rambling.
2. Proceeding to a conclusion through reason rather than intuition.

Ok, while I think it is natural to latch on to “rambling” and “reasoning” as opposites, there is indeed a distinction between the two. But man, is it ever natural to throw up your arms and spout “make up your damn mind!” when you read those definitions. Despite such natural mis-shaping of meaning, digging into the etymology of discursive led me to this post by an author with a rather prodigal vocabulary:

In a recent essay I wrote, I used the word ‘discoursive’ to suggest a communicative relationship between rhetorical entities who were serious about equitable, sustainable, and transparent discussion, or discourse. A reader of my essay disapproved of my usage, saying that discoursive is an antiquated and unnecessary replacement of the more common ‘discursive,’ the word generally used in contexts similar to the ones where I’m using discoursive.

According to the OED, it is true that discoursive’s usage pattern ranges between late sixteenth and early eighteenth century, with nothing noted after roughly 1750. Moreover, discursive is noted as an etymological and lexical synonym to discoursive, both denotating the use of ratiocinative logic. I’m willing to accept and act on my reader’s disapproval, then, but I cannot shake this nagging feeling that discursive fails to connotate as accurately as I want the conversational aspects between rhetor and audience. By conversational I mean that audience involvement in public illocutionary acts is more intimate and influential than generally recognized. Audiences affect rhetors, often in convoluted ways. Conversational suggests, I think, that sort of perdurable and coiled discourse. Discursive suggests something much more deductive, much more linear than I want it to. Discursiveness, to my ear, fits conventional conceptions of rhetors offering, one way, a rhetorical performance to audiences, who, in most public situations, have little opportunity to react. But discoursiveness calls attention to the two-way.

I’m unsure, then, precisely what I would need to do to make discoursive salient, short of a historical contextualizing that will likely prove tangential to the project proper.

Jump back jack! I think I was reaching for my dictionary more frequently than when reading Le Monde online! Ok, I formally proffer that this dude should send me his copy of the OED, as he obviously doesn’t need it. Well done sir, well done. Of course, one might suggest that the distinction between “discoursive” and “discursive” is that the silly English spell everything with an extra u in it.

-c

ps- I read some of their other posts, and yup, that’s just the way they swing a word. Damn.

pps- pardon me for the discursive postscripts, but I finally broke down and listened to Jason Mraz. Damn take 2. Listen people, and get beyond the poppy-sounding mixing, and hear some really fantastic songwriting.