Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawg
I hate the word and the representation that it might have of many of the nice ladies I have met on this board. I will not use it in describing or discussing those that I respect.
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Hate the word if you please, but it is only a word! The difference is not what a word means, but what it has grown to imply: the denotation of a word vs. the connotation of a word. The implication that a word carries can change greatly in a short time.
For example:
Gay no longer is taken to mean happy, as you can still see in movies from the 40's and 50's. The word has been hijacked by the homosexual/lesbian etc. community for the word that originally meant strange or different, queer, because that word became hated.
The word nigar, meaning black became nigger
in English to mean black and was widely used into the 50's and 60's when that word became hated to the point; today is is socially unacceptable to even write or utter the word that was used as a common part of speech in the early 1900's. Today, there are those who think that the works of Mark Twain should have the word stricken from his works.
Whenever you get hung up on a word realize that words are used to express out thoughts. The more words one knows, the better one is able to formulate his (one's) thoughts.
The word man, or his has also changed to the point that it now represent's gender in some people's mind instead of a person, even though nouns in English do not have gender (thank you so much). Unlike French where a pencil is feminine and pen is masculine. In German the changes in the noun modifier drove me crazy: die, der, dem, den etc.: all for the word "the".
Whether one uses the word provider, mistress, hooker or whore; the question is not the word but the implication of the word - if the literal meaning (denotates) is the same. Does the word provider seem more refined? If so, why? Is the connotative meaning different from the specific meaning?
But then, I am discussing what goes on in our own thought process vs. the emotional implication of the words we use.
I discussed this months ago in a previous post. The precise meanings of words is measured every day in my writings to be sure the meaning is clearly understood in the way it was intended. Avoiding words with implied meanings helps to avoid confusion or an unfavorable reception when no offense was intended.
The implications we associate with the word provider, or whore, is not the same as the precise meaning for the word. Not because the literal meaning is different, but because the implied meaning is different. We have intentionally made it so.
So can we all be gay about that?
JR
