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“Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

economist.com

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Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#41

Post by keiferski »

ukj wrote: post #39
keiferski wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you aren't really reading my comments, because as I have said a few times now, this would clearly be an act of terrorism. If your next question will be, "Is the ANC then a terrorist organization?" I refer you to my previous comment where I said we should avoid labeling nouns, but instead label actions.

Why are you interpreting it that way? Labeling actions is exactly what I did. The acton was "blowing up a bar full of civilians". You labelled that action as 'terrorism'. The ANC labelled that action as 'freedom fighting'.

You can decide that up is down and left is right, but again, as a practical matter, this is really quite irrelevant. Unless you convince a sizable portion of the population / those with power to agree with you, your aberrant labeling is simply meaningless.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#42

Post by ukj »

keiferski wrote: post #41
ukj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you interpreting it that way? Labeling actions is exactly what I did. The acton was "blowing up a bar full of civilians". You labelled that action as 'terrorism'. The ANC labelled that action as 'freedom fighting'.

You can decide that up is down and left is right, but again, as a practical matter, this is really quite irrelevant. Unless you convince a sizable portion of the population / those with power to agree with you, your aberrant labeling is simply meaningless.

The ANC couldn't convince those in power to agree with them on the trivial matter of having their human rights recognised.

They defined themselves as 'human'. Those in power rejected that definition.

That's why they engaged in freedom fighting. Or as the National Party called it - terrorism.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#43

Post by tech2 »

gsk22 wrote: post #4
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #3

As the article points out, irregardless is pretty uncommon. I'll be much more horrified when Merriam-Webster begins defining terrorism the way that the Americans often use it in common discourse, i.e. , the attacker's acts were terrifying and the victims and community were terrorised, therefore he's a terrorist.

Maybe I'm just an ignorant American, but what is the issue with that definition? Lack of an explicit political goal?

I think the difference is the intent. If the intent of the act is the death (or other outcome) of a group of individuals then the act would be mass murder. If however the intent of the act is to use these acts to cause terror (the deaths are merely a means to that end) then the act is terrorism.

Terror has been a tool of a number of political groups over the years. An easy example would be when the IRA bombing campaign moved outside of London after the ring of steel was constructed. The destruction of property, or the deaths of individuals themselves in London weren't the aims, it was the threat/fear/terror that anyone could become a victim. The terror was a lever to force government response.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#44

Post by ukj »

skissane wrote: post #38
ukj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And freedom fighters are by definition people committing freedom fighting. >What you cannot is to hope that any definition of 'terrorism' would include all 'evil' acts and exclude all 'good' acts, because distinction between these is complex. Precisely the problem. Ceteris paribus, it's 'terrorism' when you think it's 'evil', and it's freedom fighting' when you think it's 'good'. Two different descriptions of exactly…

> Ceteris paribus, it's 'terrorism' when you think it's 'evil', and it's freedom fighting' when you think it’s 'good' Is “good terrorism” impossible? What if the year is 1942 and you are trying to blow up a Nazi party meeting?

Sounds like freedom fighting to me (given my biases).

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#45

Post by ukj »

JohnStrangeII wrote: post #28
ukj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both terrorists and freedom fighters act the same way. In the battlefield of narratives perspective matters.

No, not according to a reasonable definition of terrorism. It's terrorism if a group is intentionally attacking civilians (non-combatants) for political goals. Freedom fighters may or may not be terrorists, depending on whether they intentionally attack civilians or only hit military targets. What it means to intentionally attack someone is regulated by the Doctrine of Double Effect, is based on distinguishing betwee…

Obviously you would think your definition is the “reasonable” one.

Until you find yourself having to engage in terro^H^H^H^H^H freedom fighting to achieve your own political goals.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#46

Post by zajio1am »

ukj wrote: post #20
zajio1am wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? 'terrorists' are by definition people committing terrorism. Any definition of 'terrorismu' whould define a set of terrorists, bud different definitions would lead to different people considered terrorists. Defining terrorism is not hard - public violence on civilians for ideological (political, religious) reasons. Or more narrow definition that would replace 'civilians' with 'general public' (t exclude attac…

And freedom fighters are by definition people committing freedom fighting. >What you cannot is to hope that any definition of 'terrorism' would include all 'evil' acts and exclude all 'good' acts, because distinction between these is complex. Precisely the problem. Ceteris paribus, it's 'terrorism' when you think it's 'evil', and it's freedom fighting' when you think it's 'good'. Two different descriptions of exactly…

> Precisely the problem.

No, problem is to try to assign a moral value to these words, instead of keeping them just descriptive. If you keep just descriptive meaning, you could see that there is not a contradiction between 'terrorism' and 'freedom fighting'.

Some 'terrorism' may be a part of 'freedom fighting', while some not (if the ideological end is different from freedom). And some 'freedom fighting' may be 'terrorism', while some not (if means does not include attacking civilian population, just military structures).

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#47

Post by ukj »

jasode wrote: post #23

The actress Jamie Lee Curtis complained about MW's addition of " irregardless" because she misunderstands the purpose of that dictionary: to document and describe actual language usage. Therefore, if "irregardless" is in wide common usage, it gets added as an entry. Dictionaries that are more descriptive than prescriptive: The Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Dictionary . (e.g. "whatevs", "chillax", othe…

Fun game to play with Linguistic prescriptivist (endearingly called Grammar Nazis) in 2020.

Host your own dictionary and insist that theirs is wrong.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#48

Post by skissane »

ukj wrote: post #44
skissane wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ceteris paribus, it's 'terrorism' when you think it's 'evil', and it's freedom fighting' when you think it’s 'good' Is “good terrorism” impossible? What if the year is 1942 and you are trying to blow up a Nazi party meeting?

Sounds like freedom fighting to me (given my biases).

Why can’t it be both at the same time?

I realise in some people’s usage the two terms are mutually exclusive, but not everyone agrees with that usage.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#49

Post by gsk22 »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #12
gsk22 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just an ignorant American, but what is the issue with that definition? Lack of an explicit political goal?

The issue is that terrorism is about advancing an ideology . That's the important part. It's not about how terrifying the act was, nor is it about the attacker's skin colour (as is rather depressingly hinted at in US discourse). Ted Bundy terrorised his community, but there was no political aim. He was a sociopath, but not a terrorist. Anders Behring Breivik terrorised his community, and he had an explicit and clear…

So in other words, it's an antonym to "senseless violence": as long as the perpetrator has a known agenda (whether implicitly or explicitly stated), it's terrorism?

Doesn't that also make things like war and police brutality terrorism?

Growing up in the US post-9/11, the word terrorism itself was very political. It was weaponized by successive presidential administrations as a catch-all term for "any person or group the government doesn't like" and repeated endlessly on news broadcasts and in other popular media. Terrorism is our only "justification" for holding people like Ramzi bin al-Shibh without trial for nearly 20 years.

The original meaning of the word was lost long ago in popular American discourse, and the state prefers it that way. We still see that today, as prominent American political figures label peaceful protesters terrorists.

Anyways, thanks for helping me chew through this. I'd never considered the meaning of the word closely before.

Re: “Irregardless” is part of a penumbra of unorthodox English words

#50

Post by daffy »

The author seems to claim that `irregardless' is all right and that caring about it is caring too much and vain. He compares it to other malformed words such as `television' and `flammable'. But there seems to be a significant difference between these and that. While recognizing the malformedness of these words require knowledge of Greek and Latin, recognizing that of `irregardless' is trivial for anyone who is proficient in current English: it is obviously a stupid word, and that makes it stupider.
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