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What are we talking about and how? | 2 comments

[new] Snollygoster (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#2)
by TreborScholz on Tue Mar 2nd, 2004 at 03:25:00 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
(User Info) http://molodiez.org

The latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary expelled many words such as snollygoster. After the implosion of East Germany both German populations realized a communication problem and promptly dictionaries appeared that bridged that divide. The differences in language in the Eastern part were due to a 1954 party directive that cursed all anglosaxon influences and created their very own secular russified home brew of German at least on paper. Many words were not used much in the everyday but still tongue twisters like "Stereoschallplattenwiedergabeanlage" (record player) and "geflügelte Jahrsendfigur" (end-of-the-year-figure with wings: angel) were attempts in this direction. After the fall of the wall there was a phenomenon that some Easterners stopped using those words in public to disguise their background. About four years ago this reversed and the "Tonmöbel, Griletta," and "Kosmonaut" came into use again in the attempt to reinscribe difference. I made a piece about this, a word cemetery. The usage of terms and their meaning shifts over time with new discourses leaving their imprints on them. Public Sphere-- from Habermas, and Fraser to Lessig the term turned around over and over. Reactivating words is less useful than furthering their concept, as Amy suggested, to build on their historical meaning to take them somewhere else and then plant a new term. Which snollygoster would have known how to "google" "public sphere" ?
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What are we talking about and how? | 2 comments

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