Isteism

[booksoverbombs]

Per this blog's policy of discussing trivial fake news stories even more trivially, there are some pretty interesting linguistic issues surrounding Arkansas State Senator Kim Hendren's mention of Chuck Schumer as "that Jew." What strikes me as even more fascinating than his sulky apology for having been caught Anti-Semitizing it up is his initial

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[muckefuck]

Irish has a triparite system expressing emotional as well as emotional distance. Medial sin is more-or-less neutral whereas distal siúd verges on pejorative, e.g. a leithéidí siúd "the likes of them/that lot". Of course, there's no ruling out a degree of English influence here.

Korean also has a triparite system of demonstratives, but intriguingly each comes in two "isotopes", one neutral and one slightly disrepectful.

[booksoverbombs]

Awesome; I was hoping you'd weigh in on this. So Irish and Korean are the only languages you've studied where this obtains? I realize I'm asking an unfair question, since the phenomenon in English might escape the notice of a fluent non-native speaker.

Also, what's the deal with the derogative "isotopes" in Korean? Did the pairs initially mark some other contrast, or this an "honorific treadmill" kind of thing, where a (neutral, respectful) pair became (disrespectful, neutral)?

[muckefuck]

It's hard to say, since the distinction is subtle enough to escape the notice of a non-native speaker. Perhaps "diese Frau da" is more disrespectful in German than "diese Frau hier", but not so as I've ever noticed.

In Spanish, you can get something of the same effect by postponing the demonstratives, e.g. y la muchacha aquella (olvide su nombre) "and that girl (forget her name)". Apparently this is true in Catalan as well, as Wheeler et al. say in their comprehensive grammar, "The postponing of the demonstrative may connote a degree of intimacy between speaker and hearer, and also a slight pejorative sense (but this may be no more than the effect of informal style)[.]" (p. 110). I'm not sure which, if any, of the other Romance languages share this phenomenon.

Incidentally, that quote reminds me of a somewhat parallel construction in (Irish) English, i.e. "your man". Familiar, with a whiff of contempt in many circumstances.

[booksoverbombs]

The postponing of the demonstrative may connote a degree of intimacy between speaker and hearer, and also a slight pejorative sense (but this may be no more than the effect of informal style)
This was exactly the conflation effect I was worried about-- the pejorative term becomes an endearment when there's no ambiguity between speaker and hearer that the pejorative is to be construed ironically. Hmm.

[dialogic]

Every time I read the comments to your journal--excluding my own--I become more convinced you've accidentally assembled the smartest flist on LJ.

from <i>Snow Crash</i>:

[booksoverbombs]

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

I used to think, for reasons unclear, that I was some kind of hot shit with languages. When I met muckefuck I remember experiencing exactly that species of relief.

I dunno. If we ignore philosophy, that monster of incuriosity, I feel much the better of humanity and myself for the people I've met through this. I'm pretty enthused about social technology that allows for someone to hop into my personal

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[anonymous]

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