 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeDiscussion GroupsEnglish UsageBritish EnglishESL Teaching Learnglish.com Contact UsLink To UsSearch & Site Map |
Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007Straddling the Chinese Wall on the Great Cham
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=13104&R=11 1D93934 "...The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson has been underway since the mid-1950s, and after half a century is finally nearing completion. ... One of the perennial debates among people who discuss the language is whether it is the job of commentators to be prescriptive or descriptive. The prescriptivists tell you the way the language should be; the descriptivists tell you the way it is. ...So which camp is Johnson's?... It's clear that he had prescriptive intentions at the beginning of his labors: "When I took the first survey of my undertaking, I found our speech copious without order, and energetick without rules: wherever I turned my view, there was perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated." ... So what did Johnson think about prescription versus description? Was his Dictionary fundamentally conservative or progressive? People on all sides have the bad habit of attributing beliefs to Johnson that he never held. To his supporters, he's the embodiment of their own convictions; to his detractors, he's the embodiment of everything they despise. That may be inevitable. But the real Samuel Johnson--whether prescriptive or descriptive, whether conservative or liberal--will be found only in the pages of his works...." Few reviews have straddled a fence at such length, no? Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego > http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=13104&R=11 1D93934 > > "...The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson [mugwumpery > rampant]" > > Few reviews have straddled a fence at such length, no? AOL. Did you, on consideration, change your subject-line from "Great Wall"? > AOL. Did you, on consideration, change your subject-line from "Great > Wall"? AOL = "acronym over-load" according to http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/Acronym+Over+Load I'd thought it meant America OnLine, the ISP. I think you mean "aaarhging out loud" or some such thing. "Chinese Wall" has had a fairly specific meaning in US corporate jargon -- the establishment of a major separation between two in-house operations that have conflicting goals or methods. Yes, I was referring to the Great Wall of China and not that bit of corporatese -- but the subject line is what came to mind originally. FWIW. To me, the reference to the Great Cham gave the "Chinese Wall" a clarification. Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego >> AOL. Did you, on consideration, change your subject-line from >> "Great Wall"? [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > originally. FWIW. To me, the reference to the Great Cham gave the > "Chinese Wall" a clarification. Ah. Thanks for the explanation. I used AOL to indicate agreement, which in this case might, I suppose, boil down to aarghing. Thot I had seen it so used here, BIC,ANI,BW. On 09 Jan 2007, CDB wrote -snip- > I used AOL to indicate agreement, which in this case might, I > suppose, boil down to aarghing. Thot I had seen it so used > here, Leroy.  SignatureCheers, Harvey Canadian and British English, indiscriminately mixed For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van > On 09 Jan 2007, CDB wrote > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > Leroy. Uncle Throckmorton, is that you? > "Chinese Wall" has had a fairly specific meaning in US corporate jargon > -- the establishment of a major separation between two in-house > operations that have conflicting goals or methods. Except in these latter days one is perhaps more likely to hear the PCism "ethical wall". ITWDTB. I was in a situation recently where I was chatting with a putative Chinese-American and used the term "Chinese wall", and immediately felt some PC embarrassment. She didn't react; I'm not sure she knew what the term meant, and I think it's more likely than not that she wasn't familiar with it. Of course, there's no reason why "Chinese wall" should be thought to be offensive, but I think it's come to be associated with other terms that are arguably offensive, like "Chinese fire drill" (which in these latter days is often replaced with simple "fire drill", which confused me greatly when I first encountered it). SignatureSalvatore Volatile >> AOL. Did you, on consideration, change your subject-line from "Great >> Wall"? [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >I'd thought it meant America OnLine, the ISP. I think you mean >"aaarhging out loud" or some such thing. "AOL" in Usenet parlance usually does mean America OnLine, the ISP. It refers specifically to the habit, when AOL first got its Usenet feed[1], on the part of some AOL users[2] to post articles quoting the entire contents of another post followed by the one line "Me too". Sometimes you'll see references as mock-XML "<aol/>". -GAWollman [1] In September of 1993, known to some as "The September that Never Ended". [2] Described by my former user Philip Greenspun as "AOL Achievers". SignatureGarrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness [snip] > "AOL" in Usenet parlance usually does mean America OnLine, the ISP. > It refers specifically to the habit, when AOL first got its Usenet [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > > [2] Described by my former user Philip Greenspun as "AOL Achievers". [snip] Thanks for bringing this newbie up to yet another level of Usenet familiarity. Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego >> AOL. Did you, on consideration, change your subject-line from >> "Great Wall"? [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > I'd thought it meant America OnLine, the ISP. I think you mean > "aaarhging out loud" or some such thing. By long-established Usenet convention, AOL is an abbreviation for "Me too". I'm still confused about the meaning of LOL. Originally I thought that it meant "lots of love", but I quickly discovered that on Usenet it means "Laughing out loud". (With the emphatic version being ROTFLMAO.) Among spammers and texters, however, it seems to have the meaning of "meaningless TLA inserted in an inappropriate place". SignaturePeter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses. The optusnet address could disappear at any time. >>> AOL. Did you, on consideration, change your subject-line from >>> "Great Wall"? [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] >Among spammers and texters, however, it seems to have the meaning of >"meaningless TLA inserted in an inappropriate place". It appears to be a tone marker of sorts. You often find it in messages that also have lots of "dude"s in them. SignatureRichard Bollard Canberra Australia To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT. |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2012 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.