RE: RT list: Defending the Explicature

I am reminded of my own days in graduate school, long ago, when I would
notice occasional articles in the campus newspaper about the "Greek Students
Association" and how "the Greek community is being blamed for the incident"
and so on -- invariably referring, not to people of Greek heritage at all,
but to male students associated with fraternities. One wonders how students
from Greece would feel if denied membership in the "Greek Students
Association", and then if they chose to form their own organization, what
should they call it?

Hanno Beck

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
> [mailto:owner-relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk] On Behalf Of
> Jlsperanza@aol.com
> Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 9:30 PM
> To: relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
> Subject: RT list: Defending the Explicature
>
>
> From
>
> _http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080430/ap_on_re_eu/greece_lesbia
> n_pride_
> (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080430/ap_on_re_eu/greece_lesbia
> n_pride)
>
> "Three islanders from Lesbos - home of the ancient poet Sappho, who
> praised love between women - have taken a gay rights group to
> court for
> using the word lesbian in its name.
> One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the
> association,
> Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of
> the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians."
>
>
> But _seriously_ how many dictionaries still keep the
> explicature, 'lesbian',
> 'resident of Lesbos'? Oh them good ol' days...
>
> JL
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Sat May 3 21:06:14 2008