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> Words mean things, and that's what those words mean I want to put this on the biggest billboard I can find, or put it in Nazca lines across the surface of th
by douche 10y ago
> Words mean things, and that's what those words mean
I want to put this on the biggest billboard I can find, or put it in Nazca lines across the surface of the moon, so maybe we'll remember. Language lawyering is profoundly useless, and I've no patience with it.
- winter_blue 10y agoI completely and utterly disagree with you; language and word choice matters a lot: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/wole-soyinka-isis-boko-haram/484310/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/wol... There is a lot of implied sub-communication that comes with word choice in human languages. Only an idiot or a robot would take everything by its literal meaning.
- douche 10y agoWe'll agree to disagree. The linked article is a pretty load of horse-hockey, in my opinion. If everyone is free to redefine words to mean whatever they damn well please, then it is impossible to have clear, effective discussions, because you get wound up wrangling about definitions - as we do habitually here, talking past each other.
- winter_blue 10y agoI know you don't agree, but to make my point further, this great article just came out today: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/why-democrats-and-republicans-literally-speak-different-languages/492539/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/why-demo...