Repurposed words: Context and Content

[In the hopes of continued agility of thought, and to spite mental atrophy, a present hope is to dedicate myself to writing of a substantial character. Once a week, generally on Thursdays, I will be sitting down to hash out some brief comments of varying rigor. Your mileage may vary.]

Words are undoubtedly powerful. Biblically speaking, the Word - Hebrew Dabar (), or Greek Logos (λόγος) - is centrally located. One could reasonably say, in fact, that the very essence of Christianity (and the Judaism from which it springs) lies in a theology of words: divine words given to humans from God (Inspiration/Revelation), words used by men to represent to themselves those divine words (Scripture), and words used to systematize, explore, share, and find application for those divine words (philosophical theology, mystical texts, etc.).

Socially speaking, as well, words bear power. Creating terms for systems of oppression and dismissal can serve to reinforce and legitimize them through lexical acceptance, as labels guide identity both overtly (i.e., "Illegal" vs. "Undocumented" immigrants) and subtly (i.e., the normative-neutral "White" versus the marginal and umbrella term "Colored").

This latter point may be unfamiliar to some of my readers, and - though initially I was hoping to cover this in a footnote - it is interesting to explore. You see, beyond the obvious connotations in Western societies - snow, purity, cleanness, and light - White is a generic default, aesthetically a "blank canvas". By creating Whiteness and identifying it with people of Anglo-Saxon European descent as White (rather than, say, Pink, Tan, etc.), the connotative implication is that non-Anglo/non-European persons are less of a blank slate.

I would like stress here that this is not a uniquely White, American, European, or even Western pattern, either. The same is present in modern Chinese: Anglo people are White (白人, bai + ren = white + person) [1], people of African descent are Black (黑人, hei + ren = black + person), but Chinese are 中国人, people of the middle kingdom. And humility is far from a trait of dominant cultures (Consider also the other common term for the Chinese diaspora, 华人, hua + ren = magnificent/splendid + person).

Whether identifying ourselves at the center of all things, or as White (and hence pure/unsullied/adaptable), so long as we have the power to do so, we nearly always ascribe normativity to ourselves. This is a fair move to make internally; after all, processing external input would be highly confusing were it not for the normative presumption of our own internal processes. However, to ascribe normativity to our own points of view in a broader sense overwrites and overrides the experience and authentic reflections of others, creating dissonant systems for those who are not-Us but subscribe (willingly or through coercion) to that prescription. For a majority member [2], most such suppositions pass unquestioned; but, for a minority member, it raises significant existential - even ontological - questions that express themselves as internal anguish and confusion.

Of course, words can also be recontextualized, forcefully and defiantly if need be. The homosexual community (and, increasingly, other communities as well), in accepting, embracing, and finally repurposing the label "Queer", has demonstrated, it seems, a praiseworthy amount of perseverance and deliberate, systematic, activism. It is also one of the rare examples of a community embracing marginalization, for the very etymology of the identifier names its referent as on the fringe.

The N word (as if you're going to get me to spell it out for you... get outta here) is an example of a slur with a far more controversial present usage. While some advocates of the word claim that the same process of acceptance-embrace-repurposing has been undertaken successfully, it is hard to successfully argue that the word has been rehabilitated in the same fashion as the Q word (if you would). To nudge this intuition, let me point to two pieces of evidence: first, that I am myself hesitant to type out in full "the N word", while having no such qualms about "queer" [3]. Second, the ongoing dialect debate over "the N word with a -a" and "the N word with a -er" suggests that the process of linguistic evolution and drift away from offensiveness towards repurposing is far from complete [4].

What separates the two? Without entering into a rigorous discussion, the apparent answer seems to be that "Queer" is a word that preceded its use as a slur, while the N word - though possessing a historied and not entirely negative etymology - springs up in its proximal form as a slur. When those who self-identify as Queer (or queer-allied) do so, they are actually not re-defining the word, but instead actually maintain the definition of the word while re-defining the moral landscape within which it is situated, shifting from normativity to a non-normative field. Not being queer is therefore descriptive, rather than normative, and so queerness becomes as normal as non-queerness.

My (self-)allotted time is drawing to a close and is, indeed, even now nigh. Interestingly, all the above was initially only to be a brief footnote to a larger discussion; at this point, I will turn to a summary of my intended discussion, and pick up on it when next we speak.

So, why all the thought about Words? A natural response would be: the author's hubris leads to an egotistical confluence of form and content, wherein his verbosity is buoyed by the ostensible topic of exploring the power of words.

But no.

Actually, the choice of topic upon which to spend my meagre reserves is prompted by some reflections on the recent Malaysian religious scandal. In short, Malaysian courts recently ruled that it was within the civil rights of non-Muslim organizations (read: Christian churches) and individuals to freely use the Arabic term "Allah" to refer to God - God the concept and God the being. As far as I understand, certain elements within society - pre-radicalized, and definitely not all of Muslim Malaysia [5] - seized upon this ruling as a foothold from which to launch an extremist agenda, including vigilante attacks on various Christian churches and schools.

Malaysia is, of course, a country with a complex history of diversity along ethnic, economic, and religious lines. I am ill prepared to speak on it in such fields, and thus reticent.

While the proximally inciting incident of word usage seems to be more a case of finding excuses than of actual outrage, I am still interested in the idea that word usage can be made into an excuse for action; an excuse that is, at the very least, not horrendously implausible. And even if, in this case, the implausibility of gross offense through word usage is very high, there are definitely cases - slander, defamation, and libel - in which words alone are legally acknowledged to have the power to harm and damage.

To be continued.

[1] It is undeniable that other societies also associate people of Anglo descent with the color white. An interesting study would be a linguistic excavation of Whiteness in other cultures: for example, modern Chinese refer to Anglos as White People. Was this phrase introduced by cultural transmission along with the concept of Whiteness during the opening of Sino-American relations, or does it stem from a natural response to skin tone? Consider also the association of white with death in Chinese cultures (hence, red wedding dresses and white in funeral rituals): in this case, arguments for the nonpreferential nature of white-connotative language seem to obtain more readily.

[2] Majority here, of course, does not necessarily connotate numerical majority, but instead a majority of power. As examples, the racial politics of South Africa and the religious politics of Hussein-era Iraq come to mind.

[3] This does beg the question: ought I be so free with my diction? So far as I understand, queer-sensitive allies are allowed to use this word in such contexts. I may be wrong.

[4] Naturally, as a straight Asian-American male, I am an outsider to both these debates, and I may be reading social cues entirely wrong. This raises another question: do Asian-Americans have a repurposed label? I suspect not. Why not? Interesting.

[5] I hope not to evoke a sense of the Muslim Panic all too familiar in Western rhetoric.

2 windfalls

(1) Winding my way towards home today after I finished grading a pile of homework (for my summer, SAT essays, as with pancakes, come in stacks), I discovered that, while the beloved fried snack outpost next door to our academy has since moved to greener pastures (no matter: I still find my super corn dog at any one of the innumerable, and now government sanctioned, stands in the area), one of the other nearby shop fronts I frequented last summer still stands sessile and open for business.

A tiny footprint on one of the jam-packed rows roughly two blocks down from my workplace, it seems, as far as I can tell, to essentially run as a one-woman operation: in the back, a fairly-sized kitchen containing freezers filled with precooked and modular ingredients; in the front, a tiny room large enough for the cook-cum-cashier to stand and take an order, fronted by a glass window with the halves perpetually slid aside and a glass display case showing off rows of fundamental-if-ornate Korean basics: a matrix of permutations on curry, tonkatsu, and the like.

This display case is, I've come to realize, inseparable from my affections for the place: without it, I'm faced with the awkward and halting process of expressing my culinary desires through mimed gestures and sheer fortune. But at this stand, of all places, my meagre stash of Korean is expended and found adequate:

Me: 안녕하세요 [Anyong haseyo; "hello"].
Shopkeeper: 안녕하세요.
Me: (pointing at display case) 하나 [Hana; "one"].
Shopkeeper: [something in Korean] (goes back into kitchen; returns in 2-3 minutes)
Me: 고맙습니다 [komapsumnida; "thank you"]. (bow; exit stage right)

Cost, too serves as a major selling point: all dishes go for under 3000 KRW (~$2.50USD), and several for under $2USD. Coming with meat, rice, kimchi, and drenched in sauces, I'm sure I'm consuming the Korean equivalent of an American $5.99 "Chinese" lunch buffet. But complaints are slow to come, if at all. As I sit in a nearby park shortly afterwards, squeezing out soy sauce and mayonnaise onto my pork, strips of scrambled egg, rice, and kimchi, I watch salarymen pace along the walkways while elementary school children flit about, playing on what I assume to be their lunch break; or perhaps in transit from school to 학원 (academy).

(2) My supervisor/work buddy Jae called me today in the midafternoon. Having ducked out early due to my afternoon student reportedly having been a no-show, my first thought, naturally, was of alarm: was I supposed to be at work? But no, apparently my bosses just wanted to move some items from a recently-departed teacher's apartment (Fritz, for those of you keeping score at home) into mine.

And thus, a few minutes later, my doorbell rang (buzzed, rather), and Jae turned up with a TV, accompanied by stand, and laundry rack. Of course - for those of you who know me - you know that my mind quickly raced through some steps of swift deductive reasoning, and arrived at the conclusion that Fritz's apartment might contain other abandoned items well worth my salvaging efforts.

So, throwing on a pair of shoes, I tagged along up to the 6th floor, behind Jae and Mr. Yang, ransacking the room (what, I take it, the crime shows refer to as tossing a room) for anything and everything remaining of value. After four trips back and forth to my 5th floor room, I proudly surveyed my new possessions, feeling far more materially wealthy than had I ever before been in Korea:

2 bags of (unspecified) frozen meat;
1 bag of frozen french fries;
1/4 bag of frozen tortellini;
9 frozen hash browns;
a scattered handful of frozen chicken nuggets;
several pieces of assorted hard candy;
3 chocolate bars, and 2 Kit-Kats;
2 large boxes of corn flakes;
a bag of onion rings;
a bag of tortilla chips;
a matching container of salsa;
several packets of gravy and sauce mixes;
a large tub of brown sugar;
a tin of chocolate milk mix;
a box of Nerds;
2 tins of Danish-style cookies;
2 bottles of water;
a complete set of eating utensils (highly desirable, as I'd forgotten to bring any with me);
2 pans (for the first time ever in Korea, I may cook);
a bowl;
a plate;
two pots, including lids;
a copy of Bleach Vol. 1, in English;
2 5-pound weights;
a glass mug;
and a (what I assume is fake) Louis Vuitton shoulder bag.

(Fritz if there is anything on that list that you need, get at me.)

bene dicta, magister

It's 8:34 AM, and the streets of Ilsan are covered in a fine mist, rendering the pavement slick and slightly cool. Passing cars and buses scatter the puddles, tossing minute particles of water two or three feet into the air.

I'm out for a morning jog. Sequestered for the night earlier than I had planned, thanks to the compound effects of jetlag (despite my casually swaggering boasts of having grown accustomed to international travel, I am still impacted by the long reach of geography) and an afternoon spent out with friends, I woke at 5 AM. Completing some long-overdue tasks and emails, I decided to head out for a run, to clear my head and stretch some sorely-neglected muscles.

As I run, my mind drifts; 36 hours ago, when I was a knotted bundle of anxious tics: would my luggage clear through San Francisco onto my Seoul flight? Would the laminar plywood of my forcibly-checked skateboard (intended to be carry-on baggage) crack under the shifting mounds of luggage deep in the hold? Would my computer, with its finicky wireless connection, work in Korea? (Yes; No; Yes.)

My mind worries back and forth; 2 months ahead, with a host of invented complaints and light neuroses: will I grow prematurely bored of a repetitious summer, as I did my second summer in 北京? Will my students respond, grow, respect in the same way that they did (or did not) last year? How ought I - how must I - speak to them in such a way as to grasp at their attentions, or earn their mustered approval? What does it mean, to speak well?

The Benediction is the closing prayer of the Christian worship service, the opportunity for the presiding clergy to invoke the grace, mercy, love, and care of God for the congregants. Its roots: bene + dictio, which serve as a verbal phrase: adverb + verb: to speak well.

Context. One of the fundamentals which I've already begun drilling into my students, with which they will be well - and perhaps frustratingly - familiar by summer's end (or so I hope). What is the context of a speech made well?

My thoughts flow: a story. Bono, gregarious and irrepressible frontman and lead singer of U2, got his name from a music shop in his Irish hometown. He and his gang of youthful, gregarious, irrepressible friends used to hang around in the streets, staging absurdist plays and existentialist physical comedies. On one of the streets lay a music store, Bonovox; and so his mates began playfully referring to him as Sir Bonovox. The young Paul David Hewson disliked the moniker, at first, until he discovered the latinate roots of the word: Bono + vox, adjective + noun: good voice.


Actions speak louder than words. - American Proverb.


It occurs to me, that the phrase, "speaking well", possesses in itself two meanings: transitive and intransitive. To speak well, intransitively, means simply to speak skillfully or convincingly. "He speaks well", as synonymous with "he's a good speaker."

To speak well, transitive: in this case, however, speaking well of another. "He speaks well of her," as synonymous with "he praises her" or "he admires her."

My life is, of course, ostensibly one endowed with a career of speaking well of another: the most beloved condensation of the Christian creeds, to me, is the old chestnut, "To know Christ and make Him known". To proclaim Him; to speak well of His love for me. And it occurs to me, that, in this case at least, the transitive and intransitive uses of the verbal phrase dovetail: to speak well to those with whom I am surrounded for the summer, the most purposeful preparation is, quite simply, to speak well of the one with whom I have grown - am growing - more and more acquainted.

in nomine patri, et filii, et spiritus sancti

Authority

"They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law."

(Mark 1:21-22)

Authority: "The power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge", from French, autorite, "book or quotation that settles an argument," (c. 1230), from
Author: "One who sets forth written statements," from Latin, autor, "father", "one who causes to grow," from Latin, augere, "to increase".

So, authority, at least in some vague etymological degree, means the power or quality of the father. ehhhhh

In the New York Times

"What Is the Real China?

"Jason G. L. Chu, a second-generation Chinese-American, has spent the last two summers studying Mandarin in Beijing. He currently works in Seoul, South Korea.

"As a second-generation Chinese-American growing up with a dearth of cultural familiarity, my first exposure to Beijing came as one of the perennially rotating crowd of language immersion students. Amidst the framework of our effective — if rigid — curriculum of cultural and linguistic recital, the official China came vividly into view...."

-(New York Times, August 4, 2008; online archive, pgs. 2-3)

Visions of Seoul IV

I'm letting my students take a break, having just completed a marathon half-hour of today's SAT Critical Reading test, with a good 50 minutes yet remaining in this afternoon section. I sit on the front-right-side of the classroom, in a curved-back chair of wood and metal situated under the wall-mounted whiteboard; staring off, doing mental calculations, auditing the figures on my upcoming pay stub.

Students chatter away to my left. A girl sits in the back toying idly with her mobile phone (a common sight in these Korean classrooms, during break as well as, more stealthily, during class time), while the boys play some sort of Korean game that involves slapping each others' forearms with two tightly-held fingers, flicking foreheads, or some other such typically Korean punitive measure.

The group of four girls sitting closest to me talks in quick, amused-sounding syllables; while I can't understand their content, the context - of high school students' relaxation - is universal. Two of them turn to me, and it registers to me that they're speaking English:
"Teacher Jason, I have a question."

Sure, go ahead. (I'm always eager to instruct)

"Do you know any of our names?"

No.

[Xanga] A misinformed foray into the camp of Greek.

Especially around this time, people are always talking words about "Peace on Earth and goodwill towards men." But yo, straight up now, tell me, is that necessarily Biblical? The phrase itself, "peace on earth," appears only once in the Bible, and in this far different context: hink not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to `set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.?(Matt. 10:34) (a verse that is, in itself, highly misunderstood and quoted. Jesus is not a justification for theologies of Empire, people).

Rather, the verse that most people are quoting is this, Luke 2:14: "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased." Nothing about peace on earth, but rather, peace among men on earth. And which men? Only the ones "with whom He is pleased"?

Whaaat?

Nah it doesn't have to be all like that though. Let's go back and break it down. The Greek of Luke 2:14 says this: "doxa en uyistoiV qew kai epi ghV eirhnh en anqrwpoiV eudokiaV."

The first three words are the phrase "glory in the highest", then "qew", that is, the dative of God, "for/to God," so, "Glory in the highest for God," or as it's usually translated, "Glory to God in the highest."

"kai" simply means "and".

"epi ghV " means "on (the) earth".

So, so far what we have is: "Glory to God in the highest, and, on the earth...". Now we fill in the last part, the big part that we're looking at: "eirhnh en anqrwpoiV eudokiaV."

"eirhnh" is a nominative, a subject, meaning "peace".

"en anqrwpoiV" is a prepositional phrase: "anqrwpoiV" is another dative, "for/to men," and "en" is a preposition whose meaning, when combined with a dative is "with", so these two words mean "with men".

"eudokiaV." This is the big one. It's a genitive singular adjective, with the base, "eudokia", meaning "will, choice, good will, benevolence, delight, favor, or desire". And it might be a descriptive genitive, modifying "eirhnh": "Peace, that of good will/favor". It might also be a genitive of means, "Peace, by means of good will, with all men." It might be one of twenty other things, man, the genitive crazy on its different uses. But the point is, it's very possible, if not likely (as far as I understand, which is highly limited) that this "peace on earth, among men" is not as broad or general as we might, in our quieter moments, desire.

I guess all that I'm saying is that we have to be real careful, as Christians, when talking reckless, running our mouths about "peace on earth." Because that is not necessarily what God, through the sacrifice of His Son, has brought about: He brought about peace on earth "en anqrwpoiV eudokiaV." And without a clear understanding of that latter phrase (which will not only rely on careful Greek, but also thorough and mature understanding of other parts of Scripture), one must be very careful when hoping for "peace on Earth," lest one's thoughts turn from "peace on Earth" to the "peace of Earth" (John 14:27).

[Xanga] The uses of the first person possessive: a note to avert systematic error

I would simply like to note that in the English language - and many other languages, I believe, though English (and perhaps Mandarin, on a good day) is the only language with which I have sufficient fluency - the first-person possessive has three uses: two specific and one vague. Actually, this is misleading. I would rather say that the first-person possessive has two specific uses, and we sometimes mix up the two specific uses and then proceed to use this conflated definition in a vague sense, hoping that the vagueness of our utilization will camoflauge our error.

The first case is that of the individual possessing something: this is the case in which I may accurately say "my hat," or "my chair," or "my computer." In this case, the relationship is one of simple possession: I am in an ownership relationship with the hat, chair, computer. The description of "hat" as "mine" is of unilateral ownership, and it runs vertically from me to the hat. This is, I feel, the common-sense or "folk" use of the word: ask someone to explain what "mine" means, and the description would likely be along the lines of, "owned by me" or "belonging to me."

The second case is that of something possessing an individual: this is the case in which I may accurately call someone "my boss," or a knight might have addressed King Arthur as "my lord," or the pious man addresses God as "My God." This use is less obvious, I feel, as it is a possessive only inasmuch as it is a descriptor of a relationship: when addressing King Arthur as "my liege," the knight is not saying that Arthur is a lord who belongs to him. As far as I can make sense of this descriptor (and, not trained as a linguist or a philosopher of religion, that may not be very far), it is possessive of the relationship between the knight and Arthur. Arthur is the lord of this knight, but that does not mean that Arthur is of this knight. Rather, the lordship relationship is one in which Arthur and the knight both participate, and insofar as this is true, the lorded-over/lord relationship is possessed by the knight, which allows him to address Arthur as "my lord." (I'm not particularly certain about this analysis of the use, but it is incidental to my point.)

The confusion of usage occurs in gray areas as follows: "My country," "my school," "my household." In these cases, there is no immediate understanding as to which of the above two relationships the first-person possessive pronoun refers to. In the case of "my country," does the descriptor imply that the individual owns this country? Perhaps it is contextual to the country - is it a democracy or dictatorship? Or perhaps the individual's political philosophy is relevant: does he, as Hobbes seems to in his Leviathan, view the government as existing contingent on his empowerment of it? But I disagree that this usage stands apart from the first and second cases. Rather, the vagueness in ascribing it to either the first or second type usage is drawn from vagueness in the individual's understanding of his relation to the country. I suppose that I am viewing this third case as subordinate to the first two: it stands on its own not because it is separate from the first two, but because, independent of context, it is both one and the other. Within context, of course, these statements may make perfect sense. If a dictator rules his country with an iron fist, of course his declaration of "this is MY country!" is a first-case usage. And a statesman who views his leadership of the country as mandated and empowered by the will of the people will of course say "this is my country!" with a usage of the second type. A politician uncertain of the source of his power and of his political philosophy will of course use the phrase, "this is my country," in a vague sense, meaning neither the first nor the second case: vagueness creeps into his speech not because the word is being used in a special way, but because it is being used in both ways.

Finally, I would note: I said, in the third paragraph above, that the pious man addressing God as "My God" addresses Him (and properly so) with a possessive of the second case: that of lorded-over/lordship. I feel that the systematic error associated with such uses as "my wife" is to also be zealously avoided in such an address of God. With overtly dominant descriptors of God such as "My Lord," it is not easy to forget His position of lordship over creation and the individual. However, Christianity, in particular, approaches God as a being, and not a title. The Greeks, Mayans, Hindus, and many other religions use "god" as a title for a being with a proper name (from Zeus to Quetzalcoatl to Ishvara); the Christian religion has no such title-relationship. Rather, "God" is our only "god," and thus, I fear, we easily forget that in such a title there is an inherently dominant quality to His character. It is not difficult to fall into a systematic error of addressing God with a possessive of the first case, or even, I propose, to consciously address God with a possessive of the second case but subtly and subconsciously begin to view one's relationship with Him as having qualities of the first-case possessive. We must be ever vigilant that our address of God as "my Lord" does not begin to slide into the third case, where our understanding of the relationship with Him grows vague and poorly-defined.

As a believer, one's view of God, and one's address of Him as "My God," must thus consciously be kept as an possessive descriptor of the second case, and not of the first: as akin to "My Lord," or "my boss," and not in the same usage as "my cup," "my home," or "my genie."