discourse harassment

[Drew Danielson]

(what follows is meant to pass as an ironicality.  Please disregard it
if it's not humorgenic).

Pardon the interjecting and the putting of two cents in, but I believe
that this neologizing referented by dInIs carries with it a semilla of
egregiocity.  It *may* stand hyperbolically domainally among the
'victimizational discourse'.  It *may* work on that behalf to transform
the butter-in into an abuser and the in-butted into the abused.

It may also carry the liguisticolegal precedent of formalizing
boundaries for appropriate and inappropriate "uninvited discourse
attention".  It may someday be said that it's OK to compliment a
discourse on how its put together generally, but wholly inappropriate to
caress its definitions without its express permission, or refer to it
with such vulgar terms as 'jawing' or 'shooting the bull'.  Some victims
may unwilling to seek justice, afraid that their lexical history will be
dragged through the mud.  This will ultimately result in the most
horrific of cultural phenomena - the Support Group.

Personally, I prefer "discourse hijacking" or "trolling".  As terms, if
not as practices.  But dInIs is my superior by far in matters
linguistical, and I therefore wish his coinage well.

Bis später!



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Date:    Mon, 12 May 2003 13:33:43 -0400
From:    "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU>
Subject: discourse harassment

Since considerable time is spent on this list establishing origins of
words and phrases, I thought I would recount the creation  of the
phrase "discourse harassment" so as to save future scholars the
difficulty of tracking it down.

My assistants and I were having a discussion in our office (but with
the door ajar). A colleague in a nearby office (an "unratified
overhearer" in Goffmanesque terms) took a turn in our conversation,
and we immediately accused him of "discourse harassment."

This neologism was created during the week of May 5 (alas, the
specific day appears to be lost to history), in room A-740 Wells Hall
at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI USA by Dennis R.
Preston (Professor of Linguistics) and Erica Benson and Chunhua Ma
(Administrative Associates for the 2003 LSA Summer Institute and
doctoral candidates in linguistics). Further demographic details are
available on request.

dInIs

PS: The harasser was in Room A-739 Wells Hall at the time of the
harassment, but that information may not be relevant to those who are
interested in such matters.

--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic,
       Asian & African Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
e-mail: preston at msu.edu
phone: (517) 353-9290

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