"That's so gay" - enough to get twelve-year-olds suspended

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Agathon
I understand perfectly, I disagree. It is their word, not yours. If me and my friends coin a word and you think it means something to you, then that's your problem and not ours.

I don't think it's anyones problem. Not untill you offend someone - and then it's your problem for being an inconsider *****.

That's a very childish game to play, anyways.

Are you going to stop me from swearing in the company of my friends now?

Eh? You seem to be wandering into a completely different discussion, again. But if you continously talk to your friends in a language they find offensive, I don't think they'd be your friends for long anyways.

Yes but the notion of a norm implies correctness.

Every interpretation is not correct. The criterion of correctness is what the speech community normally uses.

I have heard you and drake talk about context in this thread, maybe you should think about what it means. There are no abolutes in language. The only norm is that of the person or people you are talking to. Like I said: You don't talk **** to your grandma, even if you can talk **** to your friends.

If I start using "dog" instead of "cat" then I'm making a mistake. If I interpret "dog" to mean "cat" I'm making a mistake.

I'll take the curtesy of picking better words for the analogy.

If you start saying gay instead of lame, you are failing to convey your thoughts. If you start hearing gay instead of lame, you are failing to grasp the speaker's meaning. Like I said, language is a compromise, but interpretation is paramount. If the speaker keeps saying lame when the listener hears gay, he is either a complete idiot or an inconsiderate ***** - it is his responsibilty to convey his thoughts in a way that the listener can interpret correctly.

Same goes for the other way around; saying gay when you mean lame.

That is a totally ridiculous view - if it were true then there wouldn't be much sense in saying that people understood each other, because the speaker wouldn't be able to know the meaning of his own utterance.

Sorry? This is undeniably how it works. It is pretty obviously, and very basic. I don't understand how you can even speak and spell without understanding that you have to convey your thoughts to other people when communicating with them. You don't just spew out words and steamroll over people in a conversation, you communicte with them and phrase things in a way that would make them think in the same lines you are.

Yes you can. Teachers do it all the time. So do parents when they teach their children to speak.

Well, yes. That is the 'common interpretation' that we have talked about. But I am refering to something deeper, a personal interpretation. You can not change the images, experiences, and meanings that people associate with different things. Like I said in my previous example, you can not stop a pompous aristocrat from thinking of the "train driver" as a demeaning connotation.

No - it's about communicating thoughts to others. When I tell my friend that there is a a beer in the fridge I am not trying to get him to see it the same way as I do. I'm reporting a a fact to him.

If that's the height of your conversations, that explains alot. We haven't developed such a complicated language to simply tell our friends where the beer is.

Regardless, "it's about communicating thoughts to others." is exactly what I said. Guess I didn't do a very good job. (then again, I'm working with a very difficult listener. )

[Agathon]

Originally posted by St Leo
Do you mean to say that disabled people were once known as "lame"?

Yeah, the lame ones anyway: but I don't mean to suggest that this always had bad connotations. Let's not start another one; "gay" seems bad enough.

[General Ludd]

Thanks for quoting this Drake, I missed it.

Originally posted by Agathon
(1). Cannot be made as a case because the meaning of a term is the use it is put to in a speech community. In this case it is equivalent to "lame" - that is what the people who coined it use it to mean - that's what it means. You don't own the meaning - the speech community (in this case teenagers) do - it's their coinage, whatever interpretation you put on it is your business, not theirs. The fact that the same phonemes are used homonymously is irrelevant. If you are going to provide some other criterion of meaning then go ahead - I'd like a good laugh.

I'm just curious, what do these teenagers call homosexuals?


How is the homonymous use irrelevant? It's the entire crux of the problem!

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Osweld

If you start saying gay instead of lame, you are failing to convey your thoughts. If you start hearing gay instead of lame, you are failing to grasp the speaker's meaning. Like I said, language is a compromise, but interpretation is paramount. If the speaker keeps saying lame when the listener hears gay, he is either a complete idiot or an inconsiderate ***** - it is his responsibilty to convey his thoughts in a way that the listener can interpret correctly.

If your listener is one of the teens Drake and I have been talking about, this won't happen.

Well, yes. That is the 'common interpretation' that we have talked about. But I am refering to something deeper, a personal interpretation. You can not change the images, experiences, and meanings that people associate with different things. Like I said in my previous example, you can not stop a pompous aristocrat from thinking of the "train driver" as a demeaning connotation.

Fine, like this is some new and novel discovery. The fact is that such connotations are your personal problem and not the problem of teenagers who don't have your hang ups. You can't legislate your own personal idiolect to everyone else.

And the images, experiences, etc. we associate with certain words can certainly be changed.

[Agathon]

Re: Thanks for quoting this Drake, I missed it.

Originally posted by Osweld

I'm just curious, what do these teenagers call homosexuals?

Why don't you ask one? I'm sure that some of them call them "gays" if that's what you want to here, but I'm also sure that the same people recognise the semantic difference. Or perhaps they get offended when a fellow student in shop tells them he needs a screw.

How is the homonymous use irrelevant? It's the entire crux of the problem!

Only if you believe homonymy entails synonymy (i.e. only if you are illiterate).

[Drake Tungsten]

Only if you believe homonymy entails synonymy (i.e. only if you are illiterate).

[Asher]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
No they don't. I don't know what kind of college you're at, but people here use the word "gay" all the time. It was in the campus paper today, for god's sake.

I've noticed an incredible drop in usage of the word "gay" as a slur after high school...

Maybe your college is full of immature twits?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Asher
Maybe your college is full of immature twits?

Understatement of the year...

[Drake Tungsten]

I've noticed an incredible drop in usage of the word "gay" as a slur after high school...

Maybe your college is full of immature twits?

Nice argument.

[Asher]

Go figure that people in Nebraska are still using offensive slang casually, when most people in the civilized world grow out of it after HS.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Boris:

So why are you so offended by this use of gay if gay has lost it's steam as an insult?

It has no steam as an insult when used as neutral description of homosexuals. It is insulting when used as a synonym for stupid/bad.

Is it offensive to gay people if straight people use the word amongst themselves?

Of course not, provided it's the neutral descriptive, not the stupid/bad connotation.

[General Ludd]

Agathon, you have pretty much admitted it.

Using gay as a slur is rude, and can be offensive to many people. You have acknowledged it, but try to shrug off with a make believed moral authority and superiorty complex. Except the fact that you're being a inconsiderate ******* and deal with it.

You are right, if everyone felt the same way as you it wouldn't be a problem. But that is not how it works, and that is why swearing and cussing in public - and especially directly to whome it offends - is being rude and inconsiderate.

[Jaguar]

I gotta side with the gay guys on this one. "That's so gay" has got to go. So does "That's so retarded" for that matter.

BTW, heres my response to the "******" debate. The word is ok under any circumstances if said by a black guy. It is ok under no circumstances if said by anyone else, unless it is referring to the word, not a person. The same applies for all other slurs.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Osweld
Agathon, you have pretty much admitted it.

Using gay as a slur is rude, and can be offensive to many people. You have acknowledged it, but try to shrug off with a make believed moral authority and superiorty complex. Except the fact that you're being a inconsiderate ******* and deal with it.

I've admitted no such thing, much less a moral authority. My argument is with people who take the moral authority to censor other people's speech because they think it means something it doesn't.

You are right, if everyone felt the same way as you it wouldn't be a problem. But that is not how it works, and that is why swearing and cussing in public - and especially directly to whome it offends - is being rude and inconsiderate.

So is legislating language use because you just don't like it. In fact it is worse.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
I've admitted no such thing, much less a moral authority. My argument is with people who take the moral authority to censor other people's speech because they think it means something it doesn't.

Oh come on, you can't say it means an absolute thing.

It's offensive, and that's a simple fact you'll need to deal with.

And I do believe in public school environments, speech should be censored to the point where it doesn't foster hate, alienate people, or promote general intolerance.

It's an evil necessity of a safe environment to learn.

I won't have kids saying "That's so Jewish", and I won't have kids saying "That's so gay", and have them both go unpunished by a teacher. I think it's reprehensible to let kids say such things in public schools.

Say them all they want in private, they're inconsiderate *******s if they do, but they should be prohibited from saying such things in public schools.