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Nice cross-threading, tsuwm! I love this:
William Safire
‘IN RHETORIC, however," I lazily wrote, "parrhesia has a specialized meaning." In zinged a mock-irate letter from Alistair Cooke, founder of what he called Sanpickle - the "Safire Nit Pickers’ League".
Did I write this unnecessary "ize", he demanded, on personalized notepaper, to be read by customized shirts? "Your little flourish of bloviation provoked spasms of sarcasm, like ‘I suppose if he got in trouble in England he’d go looking for a Specialized Constable, ie, a constable appointed for specialized occasions.’"
Then there was the time I wrote "our mutual fascination", an error that drew Cooke’s "You mean ‘our common’ or ‘our shared’ fascination. ‘Our mutual fascination’ means our fascination with each other: ‘Our mutual fascination with’ anything is nonsense, you dummy! And I thought you were the American language wallah!" He signed it "Your mutual pedant". I sent him a copy of the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend.
What fun they must have had!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Let me "zing in" a bit of outrage that no discussion of "parrhesia" was given. The dictionary definitions I have found so far seem quite inadequate. The mention "freedom" and "boldness" but do not say a mumbling word about TRUTH. The worst liars can speak boldly and freely. Here is rather long site about Socrates: http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/01.socratic.htmlPlease, can someone show me an adequate definition of "parrhesia"?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Faldage: "candidly" ought to mean truthfully. In the Jesus quote, it meant that He did not attempt to conceal
anything. There ought to be rhetoric term for "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
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Joined: Dec 2000
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I believe it does mean 'truthfully', but, with the added connotation of doing so without regard to the feelings of the listener. This may or may not be a good thing.
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old hand
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old hand
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His obituaries - many prepared decades ago -
How should we take this?
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It's common journalistic practice to have obits ready to go at a moments notice for any famous person. They do update them from time to time. You don't have to worry about yours ending with the date of your graduation from the Gymnasium.
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old hand
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old hand
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It's common journalistic practice to have obits ready to go at a moments notice - If it's common practice, why do they feel obliged to mention it? I am not worrying about my own obituary, as I probably have to prepare it myself anyway. I keep putting it off...
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They, in this case, is William Safire, who is not so much a journalist as a columnist and soi-disant language maven who is interpreting for us unwashed.
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