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>Uh, I think it's called listing quotes... tsuwm, your brain has a lot of dord. dord? department of redundancy department? no, you must be referring to the ghost word: http://www.snopes2.com/language/mistakes/dord.htmand I'm sure you're right, but I'm also sure there must be a word for the placement of these quotes in the frontispiece.... >but is it a good read? the first 60 pages were...
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department of redundancy department
The county constituting Martha's Vineyard, though commonly referred to as Dukes County, Massachusetts, is in fact titled "County of Dukes County." And yes, the inscription of the courthouse, above the pillars, reads County of Dukes County Courthouse.
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In reply to:
the page in front of the first chapter has three terrific quotes. is there a word for this practice? a publishing term perhaps?
I believe the quotes themselves are called epigraphs, so epigraphologise? 
Bingley
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thanks, Bingley; the noun has, of course [d'oh], been verbed. the book has been epigraphed thusly: 1) the Borgmann quote given above 2) "Without effort, he had learned English, French, Portuguese, Latin. I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details." (Jorge Luis Borges, Funes, the Memorious) http://www.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/GEC101/Funes.html3) "Words, words, words. I'm so sick of words!" (Elliza Doolittle, My Fair Lady) so, what does this epigraph(s) (this is why I was searching for the concept) suggest as a central tenet of the book?
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obfuscation (aka wordplay, tribal talk, exclusivity, rap, etc etc - all the established polar opposites of "communication", Max!)
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so, what does this epigraph(s) (this is why I was searching for the concept) suggest as a central tenet of the book?
I know, I know! That words are not to be considered as a reliable representation of what was really intended. Hmm?
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the quote, of course, is taken out of context -- we really don't know what Borgmann had in mind. but in juxtaposition with the other quotes, the epigraph in total (having now read 180 pages) seems to be getting at the notion that Scrabble, in the hands of the competitive 'geniuses' is no longer a recreational word game testing the players' luck and vocabulary depth; but more an exercise in memory, anagramatic skill, psychology and competitive nature -- based on mathematics and symbology rather than language, with the rules being an arbitrary set of (meaningless) character strings.
this can be applied to a lot of the strange games that are played with words, like anagrams and palindromes -- little or no real information is communicated.
btw, Borgmann's other major title gives one more clue as to where he was coming from: "Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orhographical Oddities", which smacks of some of Anu's weekly themes.
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"Virtually everyone suffers from the deeply ingrained habit of considering language as a medium of communication."- Dmitri Borgmann
Please forgive my ignorance, but if language isn't a medium of communication, what is it?
The very fact that you don't understand the quote underscores its validity.
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County of Dukes County Courthouse.
Shouldn't that be County of Dukes County County Courthouse?
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