Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Mar 30, 2014 3:34:29 GMT 5.5
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I believe every language lends itself to any of its experts with so much fluidity or malleability that it is syntactically susceptible of twists in never-before-seen ways by its experts. Such twists/plays often have comic and/or argumentative effects, and used appropriately, you have no other way to express what you express with such twists/plays in any other way than how you have done. For example, the wit inIn grad school, I once had a guy mansplain to me that T.S. Eliot wasn’t anti-Semitic, he was just “anti-usury.” So not anti-Jewish per se, just anti-an-odious-stereotype-he-casually-attributed-to-Jews. Much better.disappears if it is rephrased as something like
Source: Rebecca Schuman. Slate. Heidegger's Hitler Problem is Worse than we Thought. Monday, 10 March 2014.
...T.S. Eliot wasn't anti-Semitic, he was just "anti-usury". So not anti-Jewish per se, but a person who was anti something odious, and this odious X he casually attributed to Jews.In stylistics,
Sense (thematic value) + style = total significanceThe rephrased version conveys more or less the same meaning, but how the meaning is conveyed in this version is different from the original version. The "how" speaks volumes about the intention, which is part of the intended significance.
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I watched Rock of Ages (Adam Shankman, 2012) on Saturday, 15 June 2012. It was not a film good in the sense I usually understand the term in connection with films; however, (despite negative comments from many critics from across the US and Europe) there was some good sense in it, though not a big deal (this “no big deal” was majorly what attracted negative comments amid important films in the Western context). It was really fun—I laughed throughout the film—our laughter (mine and my companion’s) made the theater quite noisy. To me, Tom Cruise did never come across as quite comical as he is in the film. I could not imagine (though I read a review article of the film as soon as the film had been theatrically released in the US). His dresses (especially his expensively designed underwear), the way he bears his body (especially his bottoms and belly), how he behaves, speaks—I could not restrain myself. I laughed my head off. The fun part was not just this; there were a lot; and it’s not for this I have referred to the film in this thread, but to prepare the ground for what follows to be appreciated in the right context.
The language and style of Stacee Jaxx's (Tom Cruise) manager, how he manages to ease the anger of a tipsy or (at other times) even wine-soaked Jaxx and to persuade people to feed his money-making scheme is a linguist's source of joy. For example, the celebrated rock star Stacee Jaxx offers a night free of cost for his old friend Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin) to save the latter's deficit making bar/club, 'The Bourbon Room'. The cash receipt is huge, but Jaxx's manager enter Dupree's office with two huge guys and take all the money from Dupree lying that Jaxx lied to him (Dupree) and he never offers any free concert. Later on a magazine reporter writes about the event and Jaxx learns from it what his manager has done. Now, the manager knows he cannot lie any more, but he has to save his own hide by using his skill of twisting words, sentences and their grammatical structures to fit his whims in such a funny way. For example, when Jaxx asks him if what he learns from the magazine is true, the manager says calculatedly slowly:
It is not not true.(meaning It is not untrue (=not true). But not true (not “untrue”) satisfies his repressed defiance.)
O my God, I was dying from laughter to hear the manager say this. See how is preferred 'not true' is modified by 'not'. Isn't that funny? And when Jaxx's trained monkey attack him for his irritatingly playful crookedness, he continues in the same calculated slowness:
This is more more true.