Language: April 2003 Archive Page

"Trainee teachers are being told to avoid the word for fear of offending pupils with epilepsy. Instead they are being advised to use 'word storm' or 'thought shower'." Liz Lightfoot

--Talk of Brainstorming 'May Offend Epileptics'Telegraph)

Who or what is telling these teachers not to use "brainstorming"? The reporter quotes a charity that says some teachers had asked them about the word, but there is no quote from a person stating that they are telling other people or they have been told not to use the word. The quoted words appearing in the headline aren't assigned to any speaker. This is a rather pointless non-story; the best thing about it is the reporter's cool name. Many amusing linguistic goodies are to be found on Tongue Tied.

"Ravitch reports that a textbook committee rejected the heroic story of Mary McLeod Bethune, the black woman who founded the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls nearly a century ago. Why? The word 'Negro.' That was bad. Also because Bethune raised the money for her school from rich white men like John D. Rockefeller. That was also bad." Bruce Ramsey reviews The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn, by Diane Ravitch.

--Exposing the Overediting of Textbooks Seattle Times)

The book faults both liberals and conservatives for methodically censoring references to any subject that may make a reader feel bad. But I don't think you can really make a student read unless you can inject some controversy that pushes students to answer difficult questions -- ones in which reasonable people may expect to disagree. The result is that the books schoolchildren read are dull, dull dull. Thanks, Jim -- long time no link.

fisk (v): debunk via critical annotation, typically with heaping doses of contempt.
Recently Jill Walker lamented that it was hard to teach her students to blog critically. Perhaps we should first teach them to fisk.

Over the past month, I've seen the verb "fisk" pop up in weblogs discussing media coverage of Iraq. The eponymous verb is named for Robert Fisk, an award-winning reporter for the UK Independent. His writing talent is without question:

Did I sit on President Saddam's throne? Of course I did. There is something dark in all our souls that demands an understanding of evil rather than good, because, I suppose, we are more fascinated by the machinery of cruelty and power than we are by angels.|So I sat on the blue throne and put my hands over the golden armrests and surveyed the darkened chamber in which men of great power sat in terror of the man who used to sit where I was now. -- Independent 12 Apr 2003

While not flinching from calling Saddam evil, Fisk has been highly critical of the U.S.-led coalition's invasion of Iraq. He is extremely popular with [some] anti-war forces, in part becaue of his opinionated writing; but his consistent pro-Palestine slant does not escape the watchful eyes of pro-Israel media watchdogs, some of whom find his statements anti-Semitic.

But just as "boycott" derives not from something that the evil English landlord Captain Boycott did, but rather what the Irish villagers did to him, so too "fisk" does not refer to what Fisk does, but rather what is done unto him. In the blogosphere, some feel motivated to respond to Fisk's writing by refuting him in minute detail -- often repeating long chunks or the entirety of his articles, and interlineating their challenges. See: "Fisking Fisk."

The best definition I have found so far is by Eugene Volokh, who recalls an article in which Fisk "(1) recounted how he was beaten by some anti-American Afghan refugees, and (2) thought they were morally right for doing so." This, then, would seem to be the very first "fisking". Volokh credits an August 8, 2002 Instapundit post, and asked whether anyone had found an earlier usage. I wonder whether the term owes something to "MiSTing" -- a form of cultural criticism that formed the premise for "Mystery Science Theatre 3000," in which silhouetted wise-crackers in the lower right corner of your TV screen comment on and ridicule bad movies.

In general, then, the term "fisking" can be applied to any point-by-point critical annotation of another text. It is a mode of criticism well-suited to the WWW, since it begins by copying the full text of the target text, and proceeds to point out logical flaws and raise doubts. Since the fiskee's fixed text cannot respond to the challenges, the fisker can without too much trouble make the fiskee look ridiculous. While the term seems to have originated in conservative attacks against liberal positions, I recently came across a postmodern blogger who fisks an anti-postmodernist.

--Fisking as a Rhetorical ConstructLiteracy Weblog)

My idle curiosity about the term has turned into something of an epic quest... I think I'll post this now and take a break. You can post comments on the KairosNews version of the fisking entry.

"In the last 24 years, Mr. Gottman and his colleagues have recorded thousands of such conversations, using careful techniques to measure and notate the participants' emotions each step of the way. After Angie and Dave's talk, Mr. Gottman says, his assistants reviewed a videotape, scoring each sentence and facial expression on such measures as disgust (-3), affection (+4), whining (-1), and contempt (-4). (Angie's grimace as she said 'The bills aren't the issue' was scored as contempt.)" David Glenn on the work of John M. Gottman.

--Every Unhappy Family Has Its Own Bilinear Influence FunctionChronicle)

This sounds like it could translate well into conversation-generating subroutines for NPCs in computer games.

"It may sound like sexual prejudice, but it seems that men's much-debated ability to navigate slightly better than women applies in virtual environments as well as the real world. And on average, says Microsoft computer scientist Mary Czerwinski, men are quicker to create a mental map of an environment and orient themselves within it."

--Women Need Widescreen for Virtual NavigationNew Scientist)

I think that title should be "Women need wide screen" (two words). I wonder how much of this is because women have better peripheral vision than men. The author of this article could have spun it thus: "Narrow computer screens fail to provide the peripheral information that women process better then men." But this article seems to focus on women's shortcomings instead -- suggesting that they neeed an extra technological prop in order to rise to the level of the men.

"Unfortunately, I never actually heard the protester's name pronounced, just caught him spelling it out for others and jotted it down in my notepad. | I wrote the story for Sunday's paper, tucked the quote down near the bottom, filed it to my editors in Charleston and blithely went about my life, unaware that this one name was about to make my own name known around the country. | On Monday afternoon, thanks to some astute readers with a vivid recollection of elementary school vernacular, I realized I had been duped." James Scott

--Embarrassing lesson: Duped reporter learns the hard wayPost and Courier)

"With the burgeoning Sars epidemic spreading fear among travellers worldwide, the Hong Kong tourist board must be ruing the day it commissioned a series of magazine ads telling readers a visit to the city will 'take your breath away'. Shortness of breath is one of the main symptoms of Sars - severe acute respiratory syndrome..." Jason Deans

--Hong Kong in Hot Flush over Ad BlunderGuardian)

Incidentally... why is AIDS spelled in all caps, but Sars with only an initial capital? Both are acronyms, and both make pronounceable words. Who decided that?

"Saying they are appalled by the way the United States and Britain defied the will of the United Nations and attacked Iraq, the four [German] professors declared war on borrowed English terms in German such as 'okay,' 'T-shirt' and 'party.' They have devised French-language alternatives: 'd'accord,' 'tricot' and 'fete.'" --German Professors Declare War on English TermsReuters)

After I dubbed Yahoo's new search engine "Yahoogle", Clancy Ratliff wrote (in a KairosNews discussion thread):

You know, I love the name "Yahoogle." I wish it were called that and not "Yahoo Search." We could also have "Lycoogle," "AltaVoogle," "NoogleLight," "Dooglepile," "AskJoogle," etc.

Instead of "Dooglepile," I suggest "DogPoogle." Actually, somebody has already registered "Yahoogle.com," but as far as I can see, the name is the best thing about that site. The website www.everythinghurts.com/yahoogle offers a simple toggle between Yahoo and Google search results, which isn't too impressive, but the logo is cute. --Yahoo Search == "Yahoogle"Dennis G. Jerz)

A chart comparing newspaper references to the terms "weblog" and "blog". Not only is usage of both terms on the rise, "blog" is overcoming "weblog". Via Torill Mortensen --"Weblog" vs. "Blog"Eszter's Blog)

"Although it took millions of people around the world to compel the Gray Lady to describe the anti-war movement as a 'Second Superpower', it took only a handful of webloggers to spin the alternative meaning to manufacture sufficient PageRank? to flood Google with Moore's alternative, neutered definition.|Indeed, if you were wearing your Google-goggles, and the search engine was your primary view of the world, you would have a hard time believing that the phrase 'Second Superpower' ever meant anything else. To all intents and purposes, the original meaning has been erased....And this Googlewash took just 42 days." Andrew Orlowski

--Anti-war Slogan Coined, Repurposed and Googlewashed... in 42 DaysThe Register)

Is this just another "old media" rant against those upstart weblogging whipper-snappers? Or has Orloski pointed out something striking and notable about the hive mind that forms when technophiles link to each other via blogs?