genocide

[Jonathan Lighter]

Dave has stated my precise point better than could I.

As always, my exx. from the Libyan envoy and the Ultonian professor are
grist for the linguistic mill, not claims that the "meaning has changed"
for millions.  But, surprisingly to me, the meaning of "genocide" is
evidently much more fluid for some people, no matter how highly
educated, than it is for most of us.  Or so I presume.


JL

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>
> Subject:      Re: genocide
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I notice that no one has actually posted the relevant definitions. It's
> kind of difficult to discuss the meaning of a specific definition when the
> definition has not been stated.
>
> The OED has: "The deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or
> national group."
>
> Article 2 of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
> Crime of Genocide has a more specific definition, but one that is compatible
> with the OED definition:
>
> "Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy,
> in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
> such:
> (a) Killing members of the group;
> (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
> (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
> bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
> (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
> (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
>
> The key is that any specific act must be within the context of a larger
> campaign to eradicate a national or ethnic group. Gunning down Vietnamese
> civilians from a helicopter or killing Libyan protesters in a square in
> Tripoli, horrendous though those acts may be, are not genocide because they
> are not part of a larger campaign of eradication.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of Wilson Gray
> Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 12:56 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: genocide
>
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 11:57 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > genocide
>
> Sorry, Victor. I'm still stuck in the past, I guess. Certainly, the
> destruction even of an abstract like "culture," in a real sense,
> erases the bearers of the extinguished culture from the face of the
> earth. And the point of the thread is the *legal definition* of
> genocide, regardless of the exact manner in which it has been or may
> be carried out. However, even if the extinction "only" of a culture is
> the end, that extinction often begins with the physical extinction,
> often in the process of the propagation and imposition of some "one,
> true faith" - after all, *peoples* were destroyed in order to "save"
> them, long before any villages were - of those most able to pass on
> that culture.
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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