It seems that Gerard Henderson, former culture warrior, has coined a new euphemism in relation to Australia’s indigenous history. Henderson has always disputed the term stolen generation, because the population of stolen aboriginal people hardly comprised an entire generation, so it’s odd that this new euphemism of his retains this word.
Semantics
Archived Posts from this Category
January 15, 2008
Stolen, not Separated
Posted by Jangari under Euphemism, History, Indigenous, Land, Linguistics, Politics, Semantics, Stolen GenerationComments Off
January 12, 2008
Some linguistic curios
Posted by Jangari under English, Languages, Linguistics, Semantics, SyntaxComments Off
Maybe it’s my less-than-prime cognitive state right now, but I’m beginning to notice little grammatical quirks and ambiguities that I’d normally have overseen completely.
This web page popped up when I opted out of a frankly unsolicited email advertising list:
You have been opted out.
December 23, 2007
Late last week on the bus I was having a conversation with a friend that, after a while, broke off on a tangent about the Roman Empire’s acronym SPQR.
It’s the sort of thing that young Roman men have tattooed on their arms, as if they were imperial Roman Gladiators, or Russell Crowe or something. Mussolini was similarly patriotic about it, as is my understanding, and put it on government buildings and manhole covers across the city.
