dramity: the fondness one has for a freshly poured pint of beer, wine, or other potent potable

This is a particularly intimate moment, as any drinker knows, and I’m shocked as to why it has eluded the honor of its own word for so long.

You’re welcome, English language.

-c

-c

YAY FOR ME!

-c

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.

I am the grammarian about whom your mother warned you.

-c

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

screed

A long monotonous speech or piece of writing.

It sounds like this word gets used a lot but somehow I am unfamiliar with it. I did a quick google search for Bill Maher and screed looking for perhaps a quote from his show, and instead came up with a number of examples of people using it to deride Bill’s tendency to (eloquently) rant.

But, instead I give you a quote from one of the Greenwald blogs:

“Law does not apply [to the President]” — that is Mansfield’s belief, and the belief of the Bush movement. I didn’t think it was possible, but Mansfield, with today’s article in The Wall St. Journal, actually goes even further in advocating pure lawlessness and tyranny than he did in that remarkable Weekly Standard screed. He begins by describing “the debate between the strong executive and its adversary, the rule of law.” He then says: “In some circumstances I could see myself defending the rule of law,” but “the rule of law has two defects, each of which suggests the need for one-man rule.”

And although that quote contains screed, it isn’t the best quote from the article. I particularly like this one, from that same article by Harvey Mansfield:

A free government should show its respect for freedom even when it has to take it away.

Ooh, ooh, and here’s a quote from his book, Manliness,

As the weaker sex…women are “not in a position to ask for something directly. They’re either obliged to smile a lot and persuade, or make a scene.

And these here are the smarts that get you to be a professor at Harvard. Go figure.

-c