Re: The 7 words you can't say on WCenter
Latisha LaRue (kfischer@keller.clarke.edu)
Thu, 27 Mar 1997 14:48:57 -0600
There goes that Eric Crump again, being such a nice guy:)
I like what you say, Eric, and I'd really hate it if anyone
withdrew because of our fooling around here. Since I regularly make a
point of bolding going where I've been told not to go, I forget that a
discussion like this can be rough on some folks.
Syracuse, huh? Is that censorship? Is it sensitivity? I've
always felt when the rule is imposed on me from outside, then we are
deaing with censorship. But if I willingly decided, for whatever reasons,
to not use certain words, it doesn't feel like censorship to me.
Actually, someone yesterday said s/he hated "obfuscate." I LOVE
that word. I have always loved that word because even saying it aloud
does just what the word means. But because the centaur said s/he hated
it, it got me thinking. I laughed whe it first popped up since I had
initiated this list-making; after all, it's not my name(s) that the
person hates. That would be entirely different than just this community
propoerty word obfuscate. I still love that word, but it got me
thinking. If anything other than fun is going on here, I hope it is just
this kind of thinking.
And then there is this. When i first left h.s. teaching where I
was chair of a departement and master teacher and all that jazz and came
into higher ed., I was completely confused by the lingo of the academy.
I found it very off-putting. I would imagine this is the same for many
folks whether they ever taught h.s. or not. I wonder how we balance that
response against the one Eric mentions below, the hesitation to use
certain words?
Katie Fischer