Comments on: More on subbies

By: Deborah

Deborah — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:51:38 +0000

A final comment from L.

I oscillate between being alarmed by the code and being humoured by it. Conspiracy or coincidence? “Dog-whistle” or dumbing down? Most of the people who use it are unaware of the framing, I think.

Or am I too cynical for my own good? I don’t know.

By: vibenna

vibenna — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:10:49 +0000

Bug! er. Well, can you do more? It is a bet! Who can write the best post in words of only one speech sound?

By: Giovanni

Giovanni — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:09:46 +0000

“viben-na”

By: Deborah

Deborah — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:08:06 +0000

“u-nits”

By: vibenna

vibenna — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:03:37 +0000

Nick, you say nice things. They show a big brain. And make me go wow! But why not write in short units of speech sounds, not long ones? Do you like my style? If I can not beat you, (and I can not beat you) at least I can make sure I do not use words that have two units of speech sounds, but keep it to no more than one.

Gah! SYLLABLE, that is. That is the only fly in the jam. What’s a one syllable word for syllable?

By: Giovanni

Giovanni — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:00:14 +0000

another word for ‘erudite’ is ‘obscurantist.’

Am I allowed to say “my arse” on this blog?

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:51:48 +0000

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it had become a code word or (less conspiratorially) a bit of unconscious jargon used by a particular kind of Evangelical. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it had to do with the advancement of a particular kind of Christian politics.

The really spooky thing was that just after visiting your blog this morning, I switched across to Andrew Sullivan, where ‘public square’ popped up in a quote he had up from the ‘Christian Defence Coalition’ http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/07/hewi.html

The ‘Slacktivist’ blog (really sharp, because it’s an American Evangelical critique of the American Evangelical scene) has had some good postings on other code-words. One he did recently was on Sarah Palin’s use of ‘world view’ — a horrible conflation of sub-pomo relativism and Christian ghetto-think: e.g. how dare you impose your scientific ‘world view’ on my Creationist ‘world view’?

In my experience, ‘Evangelical’ is becoming a pretty useless term. It tells you about as much as ‘liberal,’ ‘conservative,’ or ‘feminist’ do. On the other hand, if you grow up and live outside American ‘Evangelical’ circles, this incredibly nuanced and complex set of subcultures pretty much passes you by, and you’re likely to be tone-deaf (as I am) to dog-whistle terms like ‘public square.’

Thanks to ‘Reader L’!

P.S. another word for ‘erudite’ is ‘obscurantist.’

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:56:52 +0000

I meant to write a comment to the original post, but I guess I didn’t get around to it. Deborah, I don’t think “public square” is wrong there or even code, but it may have something approaching a technical definition – when I was a religious studies student it was pretty standard parlance*. I think it’d be recognised as distinct from “public sphere” as well.

The way I always read “in the public square” in papers was as an allusion to an old-style town-square meeting. “Public sphere” would be used to refer to individuals’ everyday behaviour in public. I’ve seen both terms used by the same authors with that implicit distinction, but I’m not sure if it exists outside the discipline as well. I didn’t think anything strange of it when I first encountered it though.

* To clarify, “religious studies” is not theology, and the practitioners tend to be atheists or agnostics – if they’re slipping a code in, it’s not going to be that one.

By: kate

kate — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:48:26 +0000

It’s not a code I’m familiar with either, but it seems unusual or new (or something, I’m not quite sure what) to have the catholic church using the code of evangelical/American christians. They’ve traditionally been determindely separate (although to outsiders they seem to agree on a lot).

By: M-H

M-H — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:49:58 +0000

What a fascinating post – added to by Giovanni’s comment. There’s a lot of sub-versions of life around, and hidden agendas, and of course they all have their own discourse, and of course some of the edges of that discourse slips into the public discourse. But ‘public square’ is a really interesting example. It didn’t twang with me like it did with you, Deborah, but it did feel faintly ‘American rhetoric’. I can’t say where I’ve heard it, but it had the feel of something a bit ‘downhome’ and deliberate. It probably isn’t; it’s probably just something that Rudd has heard and incorporated into his slightly formal rhetorical style.