"privilege"; "exempt"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yeah, "project" sux too.

Why? Because they *always* use "project."

It isn't the word that gets me.  It's the absolute predictability of it in a
certain kind of self-important and correspondingly vapid prose.

Refer to "Lacan's Equation" in my post of Oct. 9, 2006.  That pretty much
sums up the level of sense many theorists are most comfortable with.

BTW, have you ever noticed that the "theo" in "theory/ theorist/ theorize/
theoretical" kind of means "God" in Greek?  And "-rist" is homophonous with
"wrist": Jesus, as is now known, was self-sacrificed with nails through the
wrists. Thus by the fact of utterance does this (holy) Family of Words ("In
the beginning was the....") announce its exemption. Some Theo-wrist, as I
shall spell it, has probably run with this already, but if not, it's another
dissertation opportunity.

JL

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "privilege"; "exempt"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 7/25/2010 09:16 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >Cultural theorists have been using this word for decades as an
> indispensable
> >term of art.  MW defines it as "to accord a higher value or superior
> >position to."  Thus, e.g., "TV news privileges sensation over
> significance."
>
> If I encounter "privilege" as a verb or "project" as a noun in a
> piece of historiography or literary criticism, I immediately switch
> into skeptical mode.
>
> Joel
>
>
> >Unlike the jargon of, say, atom-splitting, no real-life consequences are
> >known for unheralded alterations in the jargon of Theory. Thus "privilege"
> >has acquired an additional sense, as here:
> >
> >2010 Mary A. Favret _War at a Distance_ (Princeton: P.U.P.) 176: Military
> >dictionaries [of the 18th C.] assume that the average reader requires a
> >bridge to this new, foreign world of experience. The language of military
> >matters is thus privileged, but also exempted, set apart from the more
> >general use of English.
> >
> >I don't know where or when this broader sense arose. "Privilege"
> >here appears to mean something like, 'to value,' which is not at all the
> >same as "to accord a higher value or superior position to."  (The context
> >provides no clue as to what subjects, if any, "military matters" might
> have
> >been privileged over.)
> >
> >I apologize if the online OED covers this, but I can't get through at the
> >moment and don't want to think about this any longer than I have to.
> >
> >BTW, MW marks this use of _exempt_ ('set apart') as _obsolete_.
> >
> >JL
> >
> >
> >
> >"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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