If I say to you, “Don’t think of a pink elephant,” it is, of course, the first thing that comes to your mind, whereas if instructed to think of a green one, you are unlikely to have internal pictures of pink.
There is a school of thought which says that we should be more careful about [...]
Archive for the ‘Language’ Category
The Pink Elephant
Posted in Humor, Humour, Language, tagged Superman, New Internationalist, Peter Greenwall, Celine Dion, webcam, Garden of Eden, label, warning, consequences, photocopier, electric toothbrush on June 30, 2008 | 9 Comments »
The Outsider
Posted in Isolation, Language, Religion, tagged communication, Latin, Roman Catholic, Delphic Oracle, parable, Tridentine Mass, Corinth, Apollo, Mount Parnassus, Greece, religious mumbo-jumbo, Delphi, guidance, religious experience, divine guidance, outsider on June 28, 2008 | 5 Comments »
(On the day that I read that a Roman Catholic Church in Toxteth, Liverpool, was about to start using the Tridentine Mass exclusively - services in Latin - again, I was reminded of this parable that I wrote some years ago.)
The mountains were cypress-green and breathtakingly beautiful. Spiros was standing in one of the most [...]
It’s Good To Talk
Posted in Humanity, Language, Relationships, Terrorism, tagged change, communication, conversation, Jonathan Powell, Northern Ireland, peace, Peter Hain, talk on June 5, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Later today Peter Hain, MP, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, will deliver a lecture at the New York University Centre for Irish and Irish-American Studies on whether the model for peacemaking that was used in Northern Ireland can be applied to other conflict situations throughout the world. A central thesis of his [...]
Dangerous Learning
Posted in Education, Faith, Language, Religion, tagged Add new tag, Assemblies of God, Baptists, Christianity, Episcopalians, Gene Expression, Hemant Mehta, learning, Lutherans, Methodists, Pentecostals, Razib on May 30, 2008 | 6 Comments »
What’s the point of education?
When I used to be a teacher trying to inspire teenagers with the English literature, I frequently encountered the questions: “Why do we have to do this? What has poetry got to do with me? What’s the point if I know what I am going to do (plumbing/hairdressing)? [...]
Esteem Me!
Posted in Faith, Humanity, Language, Philosophy, Religion, tagged agnostics, atheists, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, dignity, esteem, hogwash, humanism, mystery, respect, Roman Catholic, secularists, Westminster Cathedral on May 9, 2008 | 4 Comments »
It’s official. You have to show me more deep respect. The Roman Catholic Archbishop has said so!
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor called for more understanding and appreciation between believers and non-believers, urging Christians to treat atheists and agnostics with “deep esteem”. In a lecture given at Westminster Cathedral, which comes after a spate of [...]
Beyond Legitimate Boundaries
Posted in Censorship, Human Rights, Language, Religion, Society, Television, tagged al-Jof, Australia, Catholic Church, flirting, Gordon Ramsay, hair, Prince Fahd bin Badr, Saudi Arabia, Skaka, swearing on May 8, 2008 | 5 Comments »
It’s about control, control, control! Why won’t they leave us alone?
It seems that almost everywhere you look religious authorities are trying to impose their conclusions about how they think people should behave, what they should say, how they should dress, what they should or should not do with their sexual desires on people who [...]
The English Patient (2)
Posted in Health, Humor, Humour, Language, tagged angiogram, cardiac, hospital, medication, stress on April 9, 2008 | 7 Comments »
I mentioned in my last posting how communication was one of the issues that contributed to the high stress levels of my hospital stay. I want to expand on that today. However, I must acknowledge that the communication confusions were also a source of mirth, albeit unintended.
From my perspective there were four communication [...]
Re-inventing The Text
Posted in Language, Religion, tagged Turkey, Muslim, bible, hermeneutics, Christianity, women, Islam, Sharia, Corinthians, textual criticism, Hadith, Deobandi, female genital mutilation, Koran on February 27, 2008 | 8 Comments »
There are many people who chose to base their lives around a particular religious text. This religious text may contain writing composed thousands of years ago (in the case of the bible, composed over thousands of years). They choose to use this text to determine what they eat and wear, who they marry [...]
Criminal Bloggers
Posted in Internet, Language, Other Blogs, Technology, Uncategorized, tagged Andrew Keen, blogging, blogs, book reviews, creativity, culture, Flickr, Prospect, publishing, Tesco, The Cult of the Amateur, Waterstones, William Skidelsky, YouTube on February 19, 2008 | 11 Comments »
Apparently the Internet is killing culture, and the biggest culprit is the blog. According to one writer, I must therefore be one of the biggest criminals around, responsible for the collapse of Western civilization as we know it. It is a heavy burden of blame to bear, but somehow I manage to carry [...]
The Misty Woman
Posted in Humanity, Language, Literature, Poems, tagged finite, linguistics, literary criticism, non-finite, poetry, stylistics, The Voice, Thomas Hardy, verbs on December 9, 2007 | 4 Comments »
I think verbs are sexy. Well, at least I find them attractive and interesting. They do exciting things. They make things happen. They are like a kind of moving or magnetic force in the language universe. Describing them as ‘doing words’ is like calling the Mona Lisa ‘a painting’ and the Sistene Chapel ‘a building’. [...]
