Listers,
I've submitted a suggestion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Burials with regard to how burials can be referenced in more encyclopedic language than currently used. Comments and criticism welcome.
-SV
stevertigo wrote:
Listers,
I've submitted a suggestion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Burials with regard to how burials can be referenced in more encyclopedic language than currently used. Comments and criticism welcome.
The distinction that you make is unlikely to be appreciated by many people. Burying the person rather than the body may indeed be colloquial though I'm unaware of evidence in support of either position. Is there an English style manual that says anything about this?
While you are certainly free to change articles in the manner that you seek, any campaign to impose this will inevitably be seen by many as a slide into pedantry.
Ec
On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The distinction that you make is unlikely to be appreciated by many people.[citation needed] Burying the person rather than the body may indeed be colloquial though I'm unaware of evidence in support of either position. Is there an English style manual that says anything about this?
While you are certainly free to change articles in the manner that you seek, any campaign to impose this will inevitably be seen by many as a slide into pedantry.
There is no "English style manual" on the matter, AFAIK. And if there was, would it make a difference to us, if they dealt with the matter inaccurately? "Campaign?" Suggestion. "Pedantry?" I understand "pedantry" very well. The issue does go beyond Wikipedia though. Colloquialisms, while not belonging in an authoritative encyclopedia, nevertheless appear in journalism pieces, as well as colloquially-written encyclopedias.
The concept came to mind recently after a spree killing not long ago in the American South. The husband of a woman and infant child who "were killed" (ie. who's "bodies were destroyed") made a statement to the press (paraphrasing) expressing "I know they are in Heaven now." Ie. "in Heaven" means something like "not dead, just relocated." Some TV reporter however went on to say that (paraphrasing) 'people were highly emotional, knowing that they would never see their loved ones again' (directly contradicting the ("former") husband/father just seconds before).
Now, in a certain respect, its true that "dead" people will never be "seen" again with the eyes that people typically use to see things around these parts: Their former bodies (not theirs anymore are they?) are destroyed and therefore their abilities to interface with the material realm are gone. But to say that they "are dead" and that their family "will never see them again" is at best tacky insensitive OR; based simply on a misconception that arises from an attempted extraction of meaning from the colloquial expressions.
Of course the distinctions deal directly with the concept that "death" itself is simply a misnomer, and I understand nobody wants to go there. Not yet, anyway. But, why are the colloquialisms innacurate at all? Chomsky (a linguist of some sort) put it this way: "*Death and genitals* are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression." The "aggression" part is a bit aggravated when used out of context, but the concepts are straightforward: The colloquialisms follow concepts of concealment. I am under the principled delusion that The Encyclopedia follow principles such as revelation (compare concealment) and explanation (compare non-explanation).
Granted, the spiritualistic/religious view that people live on "after death" in some sort of "after life" is a fringe theory; one that only ~95.2% percent of the world give any credence to. And because microscopes can only show cells, bacteria, prions, etc. the sciencey minority tends to regard such (~92.5%) theories as based in "not fact," (where, by sciencey circumlocution, what constitutes "fact" is itself determined by science philosophy). With all that said, that's not to say that I am promoting a view that "after life" (haw!) concepts be supported; simply that we not use inaccurate (and unimportant) colloquial language which by coincidence can be ambiguous, and use instead language for which even secular and religious concepts are in agreement.
Regards, Steve
"stevertigo" stvrtg@gmail.com wrote in message news:7c402e010904281455n34954f63q2a196113486540e7@mail.gmail.com...
Listers,
I've submitted a suggestion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Burials with regard to how burials can be referenced in more encyclopedic language than currently used. Comments and criticism welcome.
Klingons would approve. I do not know what you would link it to in the style guide to promote the viewpoint that a dead body is only an empty shell. I do not think you would get objections if you did a search for places where you could insert "Isaac Asimov's [body] is interred at...". XXXX-1996.
Jay Litwyn wrote:
"stevertigo" stvrtg@gmail.com wrote
Listers,
I've submitted a suggestion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Burials with regard to how burials can be referenced in more encyclopedic language than currently used. Comments and criticism welcome.
Klingons would approve. I do not know what you would link it to in the style guide to promote the viewpoint that a dead body is only an empty shell. I do not think you would get objections if you did a search for places where you could insert "Isaac Asimov's [body] is interred at...". XXXX-1996.
The issue is a matter of much ado about nothing. Should the Monty Python skit say that it was the parrot's body that was nailed to the perch and not the parrot itself?
In the interests of mutual respect an editor who wants to include the word "body" in his writings is perfectly at liberty to do so, and they should be reassured at the same time that those who omit that same word are not doing so to troll the fears of the taphephobics.
A general adoption of a formula to always include the reference to a "body" (or a synonym thereto) strikes me as an excess of politically correct theology.
Ec
On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The issue is a matter of much ado about nothing. Should the Monty Python skit say that it was the parrot's body that was nailed to the perch and not the parrot itself?
In the interests of mutual respect an editor who wants to include the word "body" in his writings is perfectly at liberty to do so, and they should be reassured at the same time that those who omit that same word are not doing so to troll the fears of the taphephobics.
A general adoption of a formula to always include the reference to a "body" (or a synonym thereto) strikes me as an excess of politically correct theology.
Language and the concepts expressed in statements are not "much ado about nothing." And I don't know or care what Monty Python should or should not say, or (your actual point) what people in non-encyclopedic contexts should say.
The point is that its using an English figure of speech to say "Grant is buried in Grant's tomb," rather than using English itself, to say something like "Grant's body is probably just dust at this point." Anyway precision is preferable, is it not, in certain contexts, if not others. What context would I be mainly thinking of?
In this case the idea of bumping up precision in a certain small area reveals some wider human conceptual miasmas with regard to croaking. Which is normal and understandable. The only real problem is that the association of person <=> body comes from that typically excessive qualitative assertion of empiricism that states that life is entirely biological.
Just taking one of the relevant dimensions, the issues with regard to the way English Wikipedia articles translate via mechanical processes (Google Translate is actually usable) to other languages, and what exactly people can derive from those translations, are profoundly relevant to us: The first thing to note is that certain concepts may be missing and thus require expansion to a definition to translate. Secondly, concept-to-word orthographies aren't all the same, though being human means the important ones shouldn't be too far off. And third thing to note is that because idioms are idiomatic (ie. they often don't translate well), it therefore its not a bad idea to curb idiom usage in contexts where information is likely to be translated.
Formal modes of language can handle each of these, and translate quite nicely if one follows certain expansion rules, even where the cultural concepts might be somewhat different. This criticism follows from these notions of expressive formalism, precision, and reducing idiomatic expression - yes, with maybe a little divine orthography thrown in there too.
-Steve