narrative; graphic

[Jonathan Lighter]

Garson, my feeling is that that's a transitional case. In other words, in
1994 no one would have noticed it. That "great narrative" I take to mean the
"grand story," even if biased.  And it refers chiefly to the past.

In current usage, "their narrative" or "the narrative" usually refers to
some cynical, partisan version of events, including events current and
hoped-for. It's more like, "the half-truths they're feeding the suckers."


JL




On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 6:59 PM, Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: narrative; graphic
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Jonathan Lighter wrote
> > Tea Party theorist Dana Loesch on CNN today:
> >
> > "There are also three credit agencies that have already downgraded our
> > credit rating. But you never hear about it because it's not part of the
> > narrative. [The downgrades were] based on [Obama's] big spending."
>
> Here is a similar example, in my opinion, that uses the phrase "not
> part of the great narrative" in 1994.
>
> New York Times
> CHILDREN'S BOOKS; The New History: Showing Children the Dark Side
> By Martha Saxton
> Published: November 13, 1994
>
> http://goo.gl/4PahY
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/13/books/children-s-books-the-new-history-showing-children-the-dark-side.html
>
> As long as women and blacks, American Indians, Asian-Americans and
> others were not part of history, then what white men did to them was
> not part of the great narrative of the nation. Now that all of our
> pasts figure in our history, however, tragedy is never too distant and
> celebration must share its place with reconciliation in the stories we
> teach.
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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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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