Number
203
Dave DaBee says, "Well, I'll be narthexed!" when he referred me to the Washington Post article by Doug Struck, In French-Speaking Canada, the Sacred Is Also Profane, which leads off:
"Oh,
tabernacle!" The man swore in French as a car splashed through a puddle,
sending water onto his pants. He could never be quoted in the papers here. It
is too profane.
Struck says that in Quebec, in the last 40 years or so people stopped going to church and started using church-related terms as swear-words, because they felt they'd been so "dominated" by the church. Apparently they weren't really, or things wouldn't have turned out this way.
PO has discussed swearing before ~ the sexual, the scatological, and the religious. English religious swearing (such as oh god or egad) usually refers to aspects of the Deity rather than to items of worship such as host or bapteme as in French Canada, although apparently they also say things like, "You Christ that guy" meaning "throw that guy." But to some French-Canadians, swearing is about repression.
"When you get mad, you look for words that attack what represses you," said Louise Lamarre, a Montreal cinematographer who must tread lightly around the language, depending on whether her films are in French or English. "In America, you are so Puritan that the swearing is mostly about sex. Here, since we were repressed so long by the church, people use religious terms."
Struck says that in Quebec, newspapers will publish swear words pertaining to sex that would be unacceptable here. But if they're not repressed in that way, why do sexual/scatological swear words still exist there at all?
Swear words are based on strong emotion. The body, sex, and religion are powerful and the associated words are supposed to evoke some sense of awe or fear. If humans lose a sense of awe about everything, how will they be able to swear? If there is no mystery about sex, if our bodies are no more than meat or chemicals, why bother? If there is no religion, what will a person swear at or swear by? It has to be something important. Something, in other words, sacred.
I ran across a web site for the Thomas Merton Award, which has been given out since 1972 (Merton died in 1968) by the Thomas Merton Center of Pittsburgh. Merton didn't have anything to do with this organization, or any other that has attached his name. The TM Center is an umbrella group for lots of left activist groups, including a newsletter called The New People. They use Merton's name because he was against war and for peace, as any monk would be.
You can also read about Merton at the Gethsemani Abbey site. Merton spent 27 years at Gethsemani as a Trappist monk. The Trappists practice silence (or they used to), but Merton talked constantly through his writing. There are really quite a few Merton societies, all over the world. There's also a Thomas Merton Foundation, which is about promoting peace through the contemplative life. The Thomas Merton Center and International Thomas Merton Society (no connection to the TM Center above) is dedicated to preserving his writing and art, and to studying his work.
It was The New People newsletter that caught my attention, though, because of its title. The December 2006 issue highlights Angela Davis. (This Davis link is narrowly selective, it's not one that you're most likely to find at the top of the search list.) Davis supplied the guns for several prison-break murders; I guess that makes her one of the new people who are presumably of the leftist political persuasion (which goes back more than 200 years to the French revolution), while "old people" would be those who have other views.
This bit of early-morning web surfing boils down to two common political uses of language.
First, when anyone refers to "the people" and their beliefs, needs, habits, etc., who is meant? Are those who disagree with you not really "people"? Is there such a thing as "the new people"? Is not human nature still the same all over? Your post-election homework is to contemplate "the people."
Second, using Merton's name and his pacifist remarks to validate a lot of political activity is a cheap trick. Can we be sure he would have objected to the sufferings of the Palestinians but not to the sufferings of the Israelis? Are we sure what his views might have been on healthcare system reform? Would the monk have been a big supporter of queer identities? Fred knew Thomas Merton rather well, so I feel safe in saying, maybe not.
A nonce word is a word made up for a particular occasion, filling a one-time need. It might be a fleeting joke that rolls off your tongue from off the top of your head (how's that for a mixed metaphorical image?). As you might guess, you usually don't find a nonce word in a dictionary, though in time some of them stick. Occasionally you get lists of them circulated via e-mail. Word Fugitives by Barbara Wallraff is a collection of invented words she's collected from her readers to fill unmet needs. Once in a while I throw in an invented word of my own in PO. If you ever see what you think is a typo here, just consider it a nonce word. Like last week's "irrisistible". Yes, I know: it's simply ir-resist-ible. Spell check does not work on words in all caps, though that's no excuse. But how could I convince you it was a nonce word and not a mistake? It was the headline for an item about three books on language, grammar, and translation ~ interesting but not ~ risible (laughable). Yeah, that's the ticket. So I was making a pun on risible plus irresistible. Not convinced? Neither am I.
One of my students read "bobsled" as if it were the past tense of a verb, "bobsle" (bob-sel). Sounds like fun. Let's bobsle!
Editorial headline: "Ohio mental health parity overdue." No doubt; however, it was really about insurance. But this reminds us that equality of outcomes simply cannot be legislated, even with the best drugs in the world.
Someone on TV talking about a legal defense said: "This is going to be a battle du jour in this case." Du jour means today's, as in soup du jour on a menu. The speaker meant a major battle. Not the same.
Bill R. pointed out that the daily Muslim prayers ~ or wishes ~ in Egypt must have been five times a day, not three.
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