"explicit"

Charles Doyle cdoyle at UGA.EDU
Tue May 27 00:46:47 UTC 2008


I am emailing from the "business center" of a hotel on the coast of Georgia, where a sign is posted that forbids the viewing of "explicit material."

Obviously, "explicit" there represents a truncation of a phrase like "sexually explicit." Probably such specificity in the understanding of the word "explicit" has become widespread.

I wonder what the range of forbidden materials is? Verbal as well as pictorial? Philosophical as well as amoretic?

--Charlie
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