Superdel
“Pesky Godson of Chicago writes: “I cannot find the words splittist or splittism in my dictionary.”
Monday, April 28, 2008
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“Pesky Godson of Chicago writes: “I cannot find the words splittist or splittism in my dictionary.”
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Am I missing something? Pesky, do you think your question was answered? I mean, why pick “Splittism” as the translation of the Chinese and Russian words or phrases?
Comment by jennifer — April 28, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
Perhaps because it implies willful and injurious action, whereas schism evokes a more inevitable philosophical parting … ? In other words, the connotations carried by a word — even a made-up one — will guide its use.
This inquiry for me also raises the notion of a “splinter” group: we typically think less of splinters as objects simply independent from some whole — which of course, they are — as of a their xenographic locale, impaled into some other large part (typically us). Yet that latter, arguably more salient characteristic comes into play not at all in the common splittist/schismatic use of the term. Apparently splinter’s connotations are fungible.
Comment by adam — April 29, 2008 @ 7:49 am
OK. Let’s talk about drainage basins, watersheds, and divides. This relates because … like splinter, splintering, and splinter groups, watershed has almost contradictory meanings. In New England we use it synonomously with drainage basin. But a watershed event is like a divide, not a drainage basin. Try teaching that to 12 year olds. (“The land area from which a river and its tributaries … ” is bad enough.)
PS I’m changing my name on the blog. Maybe then I’ll feel like I can write about what really goes on.
Comment by Peggy — April 29, 2008 @ 8:58 pm
I like Peggy.
Comment by michael — April 29, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
I do think my question was answered–basically it’s a translations of a particular word that has a specific meaning in Communist discourse. However, the answer only begs another question: why is the New York Times using this particular (apparently charged-with–specific-Marxist-meaning) translation, rather than the more natural separatist? I doubt very many readers know enough about Chinese Communist discourse to understand the nuance of the translation. Furthermore, the Times does not have a habit of automatically picking up words from other discourses–they do not, for example, refer to the Israeli occupation of Palestine as The Catastrophe (al-nakba), as it is often referred to in Palestinian nationalist discourse. (And imagine what would happen if they did!)
In fact, I had guessed that this might be the answer (a translation of a term with particular meaning in Marxist discourse) but did not venture a guess in my email, choosing instead the more irascible tone that Safire seems to like in his correspondents. (Birds of a feather…?) He did not, however, print the most irascible part of my letter–what I had thought might be the part that got me published. My final question, coming at the end of the string of questions that he quotes, was “and what is a latinate suffix doing on a germanic root word?” It was this incongruity that got me wondering about the word in the first place and it also provided the seed of my translation theory (the word sounding forced and/or invented by a non-native speaker). Maybe I now know how classical pedants (of which there are many here at the University of Chicago) feel when they see the word television.
Comment by pesky godson — May 1, 2008 @ 2:10 am
Quoted by Safire — no small kudos … Bravo! Besides the topic — itself rather fascinating — I note (at least) two characteristics of Safire’s writing that endear him to me. Wry-wit-cum-irony, as in his penultimate line, “all these aspects of separation are connected.” And alliteration, for which I’ve demonstrated no small penchant (or weakness) myself: “graying gang of glitterati [on whom the multimedia] spotlight now shines has been shortened to superdels.” Writes seriously, but has fun doing it …
Comment by el Kib — May 1, 2008 @ 8:04 am