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.

Lackhead here. I haven’t posted in a long time, mostly due to being overwhelmed by my upcoming trip to Tours, France, and spring climbing season. I’m sure the entire Interwebs have missed my virtual smiling face these long weeks (should that be “has missed”? Is “Interwebs” plural?). I have toyed with doing a Friday News Roundup, collecting links that I’ve stumbled upon in my week’s journey, but is anybody but me really interested in why McCain is a neocon? Yeah, thought so.

But, whilst traipsing across the Intertubes this morning, I read a post by Steve Benen, one of my blogo-faves, noting yet another LABCAR (“Ludicrous Assertion by Bush, Contradicting All Reality”):

First, the majority of our defense spending is devoted to the war in Iraq. Dick Cheney’s palaver notwithstanding, Iraqis did not “actually attack our homeland.”

Bonus points that he put the period within the double-quotes (grammar counts). I had come across palaver before, and I could certainly piece together a meaning from context, but I decided to look up the definition anyway:

unctuous

1. talk intended to deceive, charm or beguile; flattery
2. loud and confused and empty talk; “mere rhetoric”

Lo and behold, I could have found this definition under “modern media.” sigh Oh right, I was going to steer clear of contemptuous and depressing commentaries about today’s society. Anyway, I think it is a good word and a handy one to have in the ‘ol tool belt these days. Nota bene- it can also be used as a verb, meaning “to dole out the palaver” if, like me, you have a soft spot for self-reference.

And thusly, I return to blogitudinal tendencies. I should get in form before going over to France, so that I can bloviate online about my trip!

Until next time,

-c

PS- thanks, mcq, for the following quote:

The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they’re not.

And somewhere in the shadows behind them — who?

Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?

– Douglas Adams. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The word that is currently raising its hand and squirming out “Oooh! Oooh! Me! Me!” has popped up twice in my recent quotidian adventures. First off, I stumbled upon it in an entry about John Edwards at the Huffington Post (a regular haunt of mine). Under a section titled Get Off The Bus And Go Skinny Dipping, the author dispenses this bit of advice about how to win the early primaries this year:

The biggest surprise this campaign season has been the unwillingness of the candidates, other than Ron Paul, to reveal his or her true selves in unexpected and unscripted ways. You can use social media but it still doesn’t make you authentic. And if there is anything that rubs people the wrong way about you, no offense John, it’s your unctuous lawyerlyness. You’ve got to close the deal that you should be the next POTUS with 50,000 people in the next three weeks. Micah Sifry, one of the big brains behind TechPresident, suggests a live webcast every morning between now and the election and talk to voters about your day, your views, your hopes, your fears. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, it’s an opportunity to inform and inspire people and show them your real, intelligent, authentic self. It’s critically important that you engage your supporters, listen to them, and recruit them to be your foot soldiers for the final push.

Ah, the chances of seeing the real nature of a politician is akin to seeing a manticore driving a Ferrari on the highway; a very unlikely event that will register as a mere flash of something surreal, yet recognizable. Something you’re not quite sure really even exists, but if it does, you’re glad it passed by quickly and you hope to never get so to its inscrutable nature and sharp jaws again.

This is the usage of unctuous that I’m used to seeing; something slippery or conniving. However, later this evening I was lapping up an early Christmas present to myself, Chloé Doutre-Roussel’s The Chocolate Connoisseur. In a section describing her tactile habits of measuring up the quality of a particular chocolate, she notes:

Is it soft or hard? Sticky, grainy, sandy or velvety? Crisp or crunchy? Getting to know the feel of a chocolate will help you recognise [sic] it again in the future. It will also help you to identify quality. The smoother the texture, the more unctuous it will be in the mouth. the finer the chocolate’s particles, the greater the aromas you will find in it.

This usage didn’t sit very well with me; at least I didn’t expect oiliness to be a quality you’d normally shoot for in a fine chocolate. So, I turned to the dictionary and lo, what did I find:

unctuous

1. Characterized by affected, exaggerated, or insincere earnestness: “the unctuous, complacent court composer who is consumed with envy and self-loathing” (Rhoda Koenig).
2. Having the quality or characteristics of oil or ointment; slippery.
3. Containing or composed of oil or fat.
4. Abundant in organic materials; soft and rich: unctuous soil.

While the slipperiness aspect certain does tie in to what I think Ms. Doutre-Roussel was getting at, it is the fourth definition here that seemed to ring with me. Leaving the touch of the chocolate behind for a moment, fine chocolate should contain a bit of the soul from whence it came, a terroir if you will. How else can one really exude that erudite affectation if you don’t lace your review with phrases like, “a heady banana aroma,” or “a certain loam in the lower ranges, as if you breathing in the Sumatran air itself,” or even, “Is that raspberries or pomegranates that flirt with you during the long finish?” Unctuous is a fine word, with a rarefied usage, that fits such highbrow activities as chocolate snootery to a T.

Ah, and now that I’ve gotten that down, off to bed. ‘Tis late, and we have 8-10″ of fresh powder that my newly-waxed board is anxiously awaiting. Perhaps once I get back, and get done with my LDAP perl scripting, and get done building up a couple of new servers, and done getting the latest Ubuntu build wrapped up, and get done Christmas shopping, and get done watching my latest Netflix arrival (The Battle of Algiers), I’ll blog about the wonderful pear tart that I made last night, which promptly and quite accidentally turned into a pear taco when I tried to remove it from my sil-pat. Oh well, shape be damned, the thing was quite delicious!

Yours yours yours,

-c