posted 04-29-2013 04:24 PM ET (US)            

--I announced that I wanted to increase everyone's attention to the use of figures of speech that contain particularly ugly and inappropriate references to mass killing and violence; I think I have succeeded in doing that. I hope everyone is more aware of these figures of speech now.

--I asked people to consider eliminating these figures of speech from their own speech or writing, and particularly when writing here. Whether or not people do this is completely beyond my control. How each of us speak or write is a personal decision. I hope that perhaps a few people might think twice before incorporating some banal and trite figure of speech about nuclear war when they want to mean "excessive," or might find a new way to say they were about to make a decision.

--I said that going forward I would remove ugly figures of speech involving mass killing or violence as I happened to find them used on this website and as I had the time to do that. This is still my plan.

I did all of this in an article I posted a week ago. See:

http://continuouswave.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/022080.html

This article has aroused a lot of commentary. At least two threads were begun in reply, and there were many comments. In general the comments are along three lines.

Some comments tended to ridicule me and my attempt to bring some greater sensitivity to using figures of speech which allude to mass killing or violence by attributing to me some sort of ultra-political-correctness or ultra-sensitive nature. Or to characterize me as a Communist, or a member of a radically conservative religious group. I am none of those people. I am a fellow who just became aware that there was a gradual decline in speech and writing in which really awful allusions to mass killing, gunfire, and violence were being used to describe the most mundane and ordinary things.

A second group of critics maintained that this observation on my part about the unattractive figures of speech, the polite request that people consider not using these words, and the notice that this sort of writing was not going to be published here were just further examples of what they like to say is a general decline in the entire website, a continuation of a trend away from the "good old days" and another step on the road to the end of the website. The best way to describe these critics is they generally think the worst part of the website is my own role in it. In some cases I think these critics are people who do not particularly want to do me any favors, and they tend to come out of woodwork when they see a chance to take a good poke at me when conditions are favorable. Once in a while I read some criticism about the website from someone whose opinion I have regard for, and I do take more notice. But over time I have come to recognize that there is a certain cadre of readers who claim to love the website but can't say anything good about me. Perhaps it is my own bias, but I tend to apply a discount to those opinions. I think they represent old grudges more than critical thought.

A third line of criticism has a general theme of the unalienable right to be able to write or say anything on the forum, and of the primacy of the original words of anyone over any possible edit or change. To these critics I will suggest that even Hemingway had an editor and publisher, and they ultimately had the last word, particularly when Hemingway was not a world famous author. I do not believe that there is anything particularly special about preserving hard to understand writing, strings of quotation marks or exclamation points, prepositions that have no antecedents, or trite and banal figures of speech. Good writing, consistent punctuation, and proper spelling are all enhancements to the content here.

In the past there have been other words which have come up in the forum that have caused a reaction, in several cases a reaction that surprised me. In each case there was one person who was offended by the word, and who stepped forward to announce his dislike. If my memory is accurate, I recall one instance, which went like this:

Someone used a word in a posting. A reader felt the word was a racial slur. The reader was infuriated. To demonstrate his anger, he posted a reply using a great deal of vulgar language. I was very surprised by this. When I had read the initial article, I did not have the same reaction. I was not outraged by the word that was used. I was more upset with the profanity and vulgarity used in the response. But I did learn something in this process. I learned that a word that I thought was not particularly connotative had very negative and profoundly resented connotation for some readers. After this event, I have never read that word in the same way again. The angry response sensitized me to the word and the connotations it carried.

Another time someone used a slang term I had never heard of. I received a very polite email from another reader, who explained to me the meaning of the term. It was a regional slang, from another part of the country. When I read it, I just thought, "What an odd figure of speech," but I found out that it was a very pejorative term, with a lot of very hostile and negative connotation.

In another instance, a participant complained about an article in which the first letters of a certain string of words could be decoded to form other words which were objectionable. I had never heard of this sort of encoded writing before, but I think it became a central element of the plot of a popular novel at the time. Perhaps that raised sensitivity to this sort of decoding of otherwise unremarkable writing.

I mention these three incidents as example of how words can have different meanings or connotations to different people. Some words have become extremely widely known as having negative or unacceptable connotations, and they have been removed from polite speech. When those words are used now, it is generally understood that they are provocative words, and there can be no doubt about the intention of the person using them.

For the words and phrases I mentioned, I think that many people have fallen into a pattern of speech that employs them without really thinking about the metaphor they contain. Maybe at one time these figures of speech were new and unusual. They have become dull and trite with the passage of time and overuse. And with the recent events of the past year or so, their metaphor has become unattractive and ugly.

We are all boaters, and boating and the maritime tradition is filled with wonderful figures of speech, which are in use all the time in non-boating situations. The maritime language is rich with language to use for figures of speech. Let me use a few in closing.

It is time for the tide to turn. For the current to ebb. For a fresh breeze to come up. We have been aground on this topic for a week. I am hauling anchor and setting sail. I hope for fair winds. Like the motto over a favorite bar says, "Vows made in storms are forgotten in calm water."