bodily

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:29 PM -0500 2/24/11, victor steinbok wrote:
>My point wasn't that it is ambiguous. When you hear "I want your
>body", I doubt you would misunderstand that as "I need a subject for a
>pathology lab". Surely, /taken as a whole/, the meaning is
>unambiguously sexual. But it does not mean that there is a mini-George
>Michael in your head, singing "I want your sex!" in translation, when
>you hear it. [I can see Sinatra in this this place, but George
>Michael? NEVER!] In this context, "body" just means "body" and does
>not translate--alone--as "sex". Why would it be different for "bodily"
>in the verse? Of course, it's about sex! Who's going to dispute that?
>But it misses the whole point--see the "rattle" discussion for similar
>points.

Agreed.

>
>Not to put too fine a point on it, but when someone says, "I want
>you!", they usually (but not always) imply "sexually". But it does not
>mean that "you" means "sex".

Especially when it was Uncle Sam that was doing the wanting.
Although arguably then the subtext was "I want to fuck you up."

LH

>  You have to take the whole chunk
>idiomatically. But the way you're interpreting it, it would have to be
>you==F.U.C.K. I just don't see it...
>

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