[Lexicog] Re: First Lady

[Kenneth C. Hill]

More power to lexicography! There are many, many examples of usage that the lexicographer must recognize that are at odds with what legislators might try to do to the language. (I am reminded of the perhaps apocryphal story that the Tennessee legislature --the same legislature whose outlawing of the teaching of evolution was made famous in the Scopes trial-- legally set the value of "pi" to three to make things easier for schoolchildren.)

As for marriage, I am reminded of the fact that a seaman can "marry" two ropes with a splice and that a carpenter can "marry" two boards together to form a structural unit. And the two pieces of the resulting timber are referred to as "sisters." Is this carpentry-sanctioned incest?

--Ken

Claire Bowern <bowern at rice.edu> wrote:                                  
 > A more important question is whether such redefinitions of “marriage” (in
 > this case “husband”), which I reject from my Christian convictions, will
 > ever enter the law (marital law) and the dictionary.
 
 This has come up a lot in the US over the last few years, with laws 
 seeking to *define* marriage as between one man and one woman (the 
 phrasing is one I'm reproducing from memory, but it's almost always 
 framed that way). There was a vote in Texas within the last year that 
 wrote this definition of marriage into the Texas constitution. These 
 debates have, for the most part, been based on the assumption that the 
 legal and lexicographic definitions of marriage are the same, and that 
 the issue is simply one of morals (which it isn't, by any means). There 
 was a post or two on Language Log (www.languagelog.org) about the 
 wording of the legislation and semantics.
 
 Incidentally, I got married in Cambridge, Massachusetts shortly after 
 the legislation allowing same sex marriages was passed. Some of the many 
 forms we filled out at the council office had "Party A" and "Party B" 
 where "husband" and "wife" had been, while at least one had "husband" 
 and "wife" crossed out and Party A/B substituted.
 
 Claire
 
     
             


          
 		
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