RE: Pink is quite fashionable.
June 1, 2012 at 6:59 pm
(This post was last modified: June 1, 2012 at 7:00 pm by Hovik.)
(June 1, 2012 at 6:47 pm)RaphielDrake Wrote:(June 1, 2012 at 6:39 pm)Hovik Wrote: It might not directly implicate that politics is bad, but it does implicate that there is something wrong with it being political. Similarly, saying "That's the gayest statement I've ever read" implicates that there is something wrong with being gay.
You're seriously going to sit here and argue that you meant it as a neutral statement with no pragmatic baggage whatsoever? If that's the case, why make the point at all? The very fact that you said something about it "being gay" indicates that there is something notable about it being gay that, pragmatically, implicates negativity. Don't you even dare try to shame me into reading your post in the manner that its pragmatics warrants. That isn't on me; it's all on you.
It implicates no such thing and yeah, I am seriously going to argue that with you. Why make the point? Why make the point "This is the hottest day we've had in months"?
Why make the point "Thats the most dramatic novel I've ever read"? Are you being serious? Why the hell should I conform to the way you interpret stuff? Suffice to say it was said without negative commentations.
This is a ridiculous attempt at mud slinging and I'm not going to take it.
Fuck you man, thats messed up.
"Implicate" and "imply" are not the same thing.
"This is the hottest day we've had in months" is a meaningful sentence in the context of it being hot outside. If it's cold outside, and someone were to utter this, it would be construed as having meaning other than the basic meaning, i.e. pragmatic meaning. For example, it could be construed with sarcasm. This is an implicature.
Saying "That's the gayest thing I've ever read" does not have any value in a neutral sense. Why would you say it if you didn't mean to implicate something about being gay or gay things? No, what happened here is you used a word that carries with it a lot of social stigma and historical baggage as though it had something to do with the particular characteristics with which you associated it.
I could literally watch two men having sex and say "that's gay," and I would be factually correct. That would be a neutral statement.
On the other side of the coin, I could see a man hug his best friend and say "that's gay" and be factually incorrect; however, the implicature that statement would engender in that context would be something to the effect of "being gay is noteworthy" or "being gay is abnormal such that I feel the need to comment on it."
At the very least, your statement implies that there are certain things (like colors or behaviors outside of homosexuality) that can be classified as "gay," and they are these very stereotypes we need to destroy by not associating them with the word "gay."
I'm not slinging mud; I'm simply trying to defeat the misuse of a word that doesn't need to have anymore inappropriate and irrelevant associations.