When Distinctions Damage (and when they do some good)

It is impossible, then, that 'being a man' should mean precisely 'not being a man', if 'man' not only signifies something about one subject but also has one significance. ....

In the context of Aristotle's traditional logic, this is a remarkably precise statement of the law of excluded middle, P ∨ ¬P.
      --an excerpt from the wikipedia entry on the Law of the Excluded Middle

In these statements [that Aristotle has written in his various treatises,] the superior valuation of man over woman is explicitly stated. However, it is also present in the theory of contraries and in other aspects of Aristotle’s thought about sex identity. Aristotle stands out from his predecessors in that he gave a complete rationale for his theory of sex polarity. He developed reasons and arguments for the philosophically significant differentiation of the sexes and for the superiority of man over woman. Therefore, he is correctly identified as the founder of the sex polarity position. . . . [H]e also laid the groundwork for another theory of sex identity in his philosophy of definition.
      --an excerpt from Sister Prudence Allen's book, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 Bc-Ad 1250

This is a tough post for me to write, for some personal reasons.  It may be a difficult post for you to read, because I may not be very clear.  It's about language, and the ways we use it.  I'm trying to represent fairly what we bloggers say and how we come across when saying what we say.  How that may damage, or how it may do some good.  (If I've misrepresented anything you've said, then I'm sorry.  Readers should find links back to the contexts from which I've lifted a few quotes of fellow bloggers.)

Well, here goes.

Aristotle is alive around the blogosphere. At least the sort of logic he used to denigrate women and others is alive and well. It's almost as if bloggers making distinctions the way Aristotle did are afraid.  It seems they're afraid that if they don't differentiate sharply then they will not be able to have any sort of discernment or judgment at all.

But the real distinction, the good one we'd do well to make, is this one:

the differentiation between 

(1) our own human language that is often good and sloppy and imprecise and sometimes playful and is embodied and yet still allows us to see difference and even to celebrate all kinds of differences

and 

(2) Aristotle's logic that would separate the Other from oneself, logic that invariably and inherently puts oneself above that Other in some sort of hierarchical Nature, logic that would damage the Other or must view her already as naturally damaged.

Here are 3 examples:

example 1 

In his post "Spoken style correction: the iPeeve™," Mark Liberman does some good by allowing himself to be "inspired by Erin Gloria Ryan" in her confessions of using the filler like in her speech.  But Mark also really does some good by actually distinguishing Erin's more limited conclusions from his own.  He can, for example, question what she only presumes:  "whether vernacular like is genuinely female-associated," and then he can ask "the broader question of whether there's a female speech style characterized by features that weaken assertions."

However, then Mark sets himself above Erin by differentiating in a way that could damage his blog readers' perceptions of the way she speaks.  He suggests that her "incessant repetition of a low-information-content filler is annoying to listeners and should be avoided."  Yes, I know he goes on to generalize beyond Erin's own confession to say - like a logical prescriptivist would - that absolutely all of the following "should be avoided":  "like" or "literally" or "you know" or just plain "uh."  See how this prescription differentiates?  How it sets one sort of English speaker above the others.  Mark starts to sound like the logical prescriptivist Aristotle, who insisted that ambiguities "should be avoided" or else they'll make a lousy speaker.  What's really not so good is that Mark can't even follow his own prescription for the language that not good speakers "should" avoid.  In the very blogpost where he says fillers should be avoided, Mark himself fails to avoid using a filler.  He writes the filler "well"; he writes it and doesn't avoid it.  He writes the filler "well" as if he's talking:  "What am I talking about?," he asks in writing.  Then he says, pausing with his filler:  "Well, ..."  In kind reply to my comment pointing this out, Mark further differentiates the Nature of things; he says in red font:  "Sentence-initial well is what's generally called a "discourse marker" — it wouldn't become a "verbal tic" unless it was over-used."  Notice, it's NOT a "filler" or "verbal tic" when four differentiations can be made:  (a) "well" is "sentence-initial"; (b) someone writes a wikipedia article and calls "well" a "discourse marker"; and (c) until and unless "well" is "over-used" like "Ms. Ryan's" like is so overused; and (d) until and unless the speaker or writer like "Ms. Ryan" confesses to having "her (self-)conscious reaction" to using "well," a reaction, by the way, "[that] is ... quite negative."  And so notice, differentiate, how differently Mark uses his language from how Erin uses hers.

In summary, Mark makes some good distinctions after being inspired by Erin's blogpost.  Then he continues on to do some damage by differentiating the various differences between proper speech, in the way he uses it, and NOT proper speech that "should be avoided," in the way that she uses it.

example 2

In her post, "Sunday Superlatives: 6/26/2011," Rachel Held Evans does some good by differentiating some of the best blogposts she's read, on the one hand, from some bad blogposts, on the otherhand.  For example, Rachel sees how "spot-on" Jamie the Very Worst Missionary is with her post, “Human, Like Jesus,” (in which Jamie differentiates between people who tend to run down being human, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, people who tend more to go with the Jesus kind of humanity, i.e., "our humanity that compels us to treat others with kindness and respect").  Likewise, Rachel sees the "best argument" in Daniel Kirk's post, “Gay Marriage in New York” (in which Daniel differentiates between the state being in the marriage business, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the church NOT being in this business).  Furthermore, Rachel sees as "most provocative" Caryn Rivadeneira's post, “What Christians Can Respect About Slutwalks” (in which Caryn differentiates, on the one hand, the "horrific" thing that a male police officer in Toronto said from the more honorable protests by slutwalkers, on the other hand).  And then Rachel even does good by differentiating the bad:  Rachel calls "Most Un-Cool (...and not in a good way)" Karen Swallow's post “An Open Letter to Donald Miller” (since Karen differentiates how Donald Miller and how she Karen would make a list of qualities in a fianc(é)e in some Christianly way, on the one hand, and how Donald's actual fiancée has so differently made her list, on the other hand, in a not so Christianly way, i.e., in a way that "doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for God to bring a partner who can meet needs we don’t even know we have, needs God knows more intimately than we or our spouses can ever know").

However, then Rachel seems to talk about Karen by differentiating in a way that could damage Karen's blog readers' perceptions of the way she speaks.  Rachel says of Karen's blogpost:  "Unsolicited marriage advice from a complete strange in the form of 'open letter' = not cool."  And we all wonder if we can easily differentiate Rachel's unsolicited statement here about Karen's unsolicited one.  Who is above the other?  Who can call somebody's blogpost "cool" or "not cool" if the one is differentiating herself from the other but does the very same sort of differentiating as the other?  It's sort of confusing.  But the subtleties here are what can damage the Other.

And so let's look at what the ostensibly "cooler" (as if in a "good" way) bloggers do as "Christians" differentiated from the Others.  Daniel, for example, writes:  "It’s difficult for Christians to imagine a world where we are truly in the minority and subject to the power of people with alternative religious convictions."  And he adds, "As Christians, we need to learn how to hold our own religious views while seeking liberty and justice for all–not just those who happen to believe as we do."  And his clear differentiations are between "Christians we" vs. Others "truly in the minority" who cannot "believe as we do" because they're NOT Christians maybe gays - as if these are mutually exclusive categories with the middle excluded.  Isn't it damaging to find yourself without a real category, if you are Christian and gay or are Christian and some other minority or are Christian and yet still not necessarily sharing all the beliefs like Daniel's Christians do?  Similarly, Caryn says:  "While we can debate the method of SlutWalks, Christians should agree on their purpose. Christians should be leading the marches against violence toward women."  Can one not be a Christian and a feminist and also a SlutWalker?  Or is the only thing "Christians" can share with "their" debatable feminist method "their [SlutWalk] purpose"?  Can we all see how this sort of us NOT them differentiation doesn't allow people to be who they are or who they're becoming, as if one category of religious person is above the Others they're trying to "love" or at least somehow to agree with?  Doesn't the absolute differentiation damage?

example 3

Now let me point the finger at me.   I'll keep it short, but you'll have links if you want it long.   At this blogpost, I commented about two of my fellow bloggers in disagreement:  "I’m thinking that there are already two clear disagreements to note and that our seeing these differences clearly shouldn’t hurt anybody."  I was really hoping to do some good in differentiating, at least not to do damage.

However, it's clear there's been damage done late in a related conversation at a related blogpost here.  One of the conversants quotes me and says:  "Well, I don’t know about the 'not hurting' part. Of course it hurts. But ... "  Oops!  Suddenly I find myself perhaps doing not good but damage by using logic that separates instead of human language that appreciates difference.

Do you see the difference?  Can we appreciate differences in Others as we all talk, and change, and grow up a bit?  These are some of my questions this week as I listen in on and participate in blog talk and differentiations.

Poetry and the End of Theology

After I posted "Our World Without Ambiguity, or humility" this morning, James K. A. Smith posted "Poetry and the End of Theology."

Smith is asking some dangerous questions again:

But how did a discourse so uncreative become the deputized voice of the Creator? How did a genre so flat and sober and unimaginative become the official mouthpiece of a God who created platypuses and larkspur? Frankly, how did the boring disquisitions of “systematic” theology emerge as the authoritative voice for a people who follow a story-teller like Jesus?

And he's making some dangerous comparisons:

The republic of [Christian] theology, like Plato’s city [i.e., The Republic], is built on the exile of the poets whose “fictions” are a dangerous distraction.

Smith sums up his own short story succinctly:

theology picked up some very bad habits in modernity.

What Smith hasn't yet done is to tell the story of where what he calls "modernity" has picked up its very bad habits from.  And yet Smith gives clues:

the language of propositions and syllogisms

Now, who invented such logic and refined the true systematic process of scientific knowing that we call "syllogistic reasoning"?  Who's the one who worked against "images and metaphors" and "fiction and poetry"?  Who's that one who railed against divine "revelation"? 

Yes, that's right.  It's the pre-modern, poetry-despising, anti-female, barbarian-(like-you-and-me)-hating, utterly-objective, father of modernity:

Aristotle.

Riddle me ree: Here's one for you

Let me just warn you that I'm writing very quickly this morning.  I almost entitled this one "Jesus: the feminist rhetorical translator" (since recently I finished Tom Thatcher's important book Jesus the Riddler:  the power of ambiguity in the gospels). 

But let me start this particular post by saying that, after very careful study of Aristotle in his own Greek writings, it's become apparent to me that he was neither feminist nor rhetorical -- that is, he rather despised females and denigrated ways of knowing and of communicating that were not "logic."  Aristotle wanted translation, but only in one direction:  his.  That is, he taught his powerful elite male students - such as Alexander the Great - to conquer, even by logic and by the Greek language.

Which is all very different (and maybe ironically opposite) from an odder and later figure in our histories:  Jesus.

The problem that many of us have in writing and reading history now is that we forgo the sort of methods Jesus used for Aristotle's logic.  (but to be clear, Aristotle never intended for any of us of any less-educated, un-Greek, or fe-male species to translate his logic as ours).  One method Jesus used, which needs substantial recovering, is "the riddle."  (to be clear, Aristotle taught his students very directly against riddling.)

As mentioned earlier, I was reading Tom Thatcher's book Jesus the Riddler while re-reading Mary Daly's book Gyn/Ecology and it occurred to me for the first time:  wordplay (i.e., the sophistry that ARistotle and Plato and Plato's Socrates rails against -- the "rhetoric" and the "riddling" they so dispise) is a sort of methodology or is a set of methologies that many poets, sophists, women, and rhetoricians have used down through the years.

And there is much resistance to if not just ignorance about the cross-cultural and historical uses of wordplay.  (A respected contemporary new testament Greek scholar, such as Bill Mounce, for example, confesses he isn't familiar with Dissoi Logoi, the pluralistic sophistic reviews of what goes on in various societies who construct knowledge and being by language in radically different - sometime ambiguous - ways.)

Let me leave this post, then, because i'm nearly out of time.  Let me leave you with just a quick example of the riddling of Jesus (from Thatcher's very careful but not yet exhaustive study).  Thatcher notes how Jesus (according tot he various gospel writers translating him into playful Greek) would mark a riddle with the statement:

"Whoever has ears to hear let him or her hear"

or would ask rhetorically, "having eyes, don't you see and having ears, don't you hear?"

[οἳ ἔχουσιν ὀφθαλμοὺς τοῦ βλέπειν καὶ οὐ βλέπουσιν καὶ ὦτα ἔχουσιν τοῦ ἀκούειν καὶ οὐκ ἀκούουσιν]

Through Aristotle's (non-sophist, non-rhetorical) eyes and ears, the contemporary translator would guess and speculate and suggest it means something like:

Let this be a word to the wise 

Thatcher rather playfully says this sort of logic has the Greek phrase [ος εχει ωτα ακουειν ακουετω] "as a functional synonym for the modern maternal admonition 'Pay attention!'" (page 31).  But when one listens for Jesus as a riddler telling riddles (a kind of dialectic of wise sophistry among Jewish rabbis) then you might hear the Greek translated phrase as "functionally equivalent to 'Riddle me ree' or 'Here's one for you,' although the subject matter [in the public conversation and teaching] is obviously more significant than the pub jokes [where] we [might] introduce those phrases today" (page 40).

Ways of Translation: Part 1, Language as Proposition

Some time back, I blogged to quote a bunch of Aristotle experts (all rhetoricians), who noted that Aristotle's definitions for words are (as Jeffrey Walker put it) "not quite 'Aristotelian'." To be clear, not being quite Aristotelian is not such a good thing for Aristotle.

To be Aristotelian is to be logical. It is to define terms in terms of what A is and what A is not. It is to be syllogistical. It is to bind statements together (or "syn" + "logoi"). It to to begin with the given facts of Nature that any observer can objectively observe and to continue one statement (or "logos") after another until one reaches a proven, determined, indisputable conclusion. It is a construct congruent with Nature. To be logical in this way is to be propositional.

A couple of decades back, I took a Survey of Linguistic Theories course as part of a graduate degree in linguistics. For some balance, two different professors who had co-written the textbook taught the course. It was clear then (and it is clear as revised or newer theories about language and language science are constructed now) that most theoreticians about Language strive (as Aristotle did even in his writings on language) to be Aristotelian. Noam Chomsky's earliest theory of Language, for example, was obviously Aristotelian in its system of binary features. Even the more platonic division between Competence that underlies Performance is a binary. Likewise, the Relevance Theory of Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber that some linguists interested in translation are looking to assumes language as propositional (whether explicit or implicit propositions), that the natural essence of language is communication of a message or of information. In translation based on such, therefore, there are metaphors such as "equivalence" whether "literal" or "dynamic" or whether "formal" or "functional"; there are notions such as "source" and "target" and "accuracy." And these metaphors and notions, so named, are binary. The basis for even talking about Language and about Translation is Aristotelian. Language and Translation become the game of Proposition.

The game is like that of the first sower in Mark's translation of Jesus's parable of the sower:

ὃ μὲν ἔπεσεν παρὰ τὴν ὁδόν

"some fell by the way side"

Lest any reader miss that Mark explains (by having Jesus explain to his disciples):

Οὗτοι δέ εἰσιν οἱ παρὰ τὴν ὁδόν, ὅπου σπείρεται ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὅταν ἀκούσωσιν, εὐθέως ἔρχεται ὁ Σατανᾶς καὶ αἴρει τὸν λόγον τὸν ἐσπαρμένον ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις αὐτῶν

"And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts."

This is very much like Aristotle's propositional logic. If a statement is not logical, then it is illogical. If the statement is not true, then it is false. If the statement is unread or unheard, then there is no meaning to be gotten. The proposition is the main thing. The statement really is the only thing.

(and Nancy Mairs chimes in to say,

Which is not women’s language, since women, for a variety of reasons, live in a polymorphic rather than a dimorphic world, a world in which the differentiation of self from other may never completely take place, in which multiple selves may engage multiply with the multiple desires of the creatures in it.)

But, of course, there is more to the story, Mair's and Mark's and Jesus's. There are other ways of considering Language and Translation.

St. Paul and Aristotle: more influences

This post is continued from another.  I began considering with you how Paul often gets paired with Aristotle.

There are a few personal comparisons to make first.  For example, both followed their own ideals on marriage.  Aristotle wrote that the ideal age to get married for a man was 37, and for his wife, 18; -- and Aristotle was 37 when he took 18-year-old Pythias to be his wife.  Paul wrote that he was single; -- and Paul advised his students to be single also, saying that singleness was a gift from God.  Both men wrote that baldness in a man is natural and good or at least his hair should be realitively short; -- and both, we speculate, were bald or kept their hair short.

Then there are comparisons to make in their thinking.  Both men were suspicious of Greek philosophies that could not account for and encompass Nature, life-long systematic Learning, and God.  Both men appealed to themselves as examples of Natural men, as Learners (or disciples or apprentices with their own students), and as Experts on eternal and heavenly affairs.

Paul, like Aristotle, appeals to Nature when writing about Politics and Ethics and Economics (and by the latter I also mean something like Household Rule, or Oikos Nomos).  Naturally, the order is government over citizens, master over slaves, husband over wives, fathers over children.

For Aristotle, there was the study of Nature (φυσική or physike or "physics"), the apprehension of pure and precise systems (μαθηματική or mathematike or "math"), and the study of divine logic (θεολογική or theologike or "theology").  As far as I can tell, Aristotle coined those last two words:  mathemat-ike and theolog-ike or "lesson-ista" and "god-statement-ista."  In The Metaphysics Aristotle classes the three concepts together, naturally and systematically and logically, as the three sub-categories of φιλοσοφίαι θεωρητικαί or phosophiai theoretikai or "philosophy's theory."

The most interesting thing to note here is that Aristotle is not only concerned about being pure and precise but he is also concerned with sounding pure and precise.  To sound technical, Aristotle coins words using the suffix, -ική.  Curiously, it's a grammatically feminine ending that in some contexts disparages females.   I've played with translation into English so that φυσική or physike is rendered Nature-ista or Nature-istic.  And μαθηματική or mathematike is translated Lesson-ista or Lesson-istics.  And θεολογική or theologike sounds, in English, like God-Statement-istics or God-Statement-ista.

As we all know (or maybe you don't yet), Paul is the only writer of anything in the canonized New Testament who uses this suffix.  In fact, it seems that Jews translating the Holy Hebrew Torah and the other scriptures in Alexandria, Egypt avoided the suffix like another plague.  It was something of Aristotle that he'd learned from Plato; and, worse, it was something that Aristotle had taught Alexander the Great.  The translators (the Septuagint translators) only slipped a couple of times and used the -ICKY suffix when translating something about -ική women.

Before we get to which word Paul used exactly, which word with the suffix -ική, let me say a little something about the context in which he used the word.  He was writing to Jews and Greeks in Rome.  This is the letter we call "Romans."  What is fascinating is that Paul does not tell the women and wives in Rome to submit to their husbands; he does not tell them in this letter that they must not teach men or that they must learn quietly from their husbands at home; and he gives the women in Rome no instruction to stay silent in the Assembly.  Why not?  Well, why?  In Rome, such things were already strictly regulated by law and by custom.  Paul did not need to enforce the rule of men over women in home, in church, or in instruction.  The Roman government had outdone Aristotle (and Paul) in letting males rule naturally.  The other fascinating thing to note is that Paul does not address the Romans.  Rather, he appeals to the Jews and their scriptures.  And he appeals to the Greeks.  But he calls the Romans by Aristotle's term of disparagement:  he calls the Latin, Italian men of Rome "Barbarians."  (For some discussion of this, see my blogger friend Bob MacDonald's post Paul's Cantus Firmus
and my comment there).

Now, what's the -ική word Paul uses?  And don't you think the Greeks in Rome reading got it?  This is Aristotle's word, his very method.  The word is λογική or logike or Statement-ista or Statement-istics.  Paul is using it in the accusative case (which simply means it's in the grammatical form of a direct object).  But by it, he's modifying the word λατρείαν or latreian, which earlier Jews in Alexandria, Egypt had used to translate עֲבֹדָה (or `abodah) in "Exodus 12:25."  The Greek and Hebrew words mean something like religious "service."  The Greek word is not used much in the New Testament.  And Aristotle's word (i.e., "logic") is never used elsewhere nor is any other Greek Aristotle-like word with the special technical female-sounding suffix.  Paul is appealing to the Jews and Greeks in Rome about their "service" to God.  He's saying their service is as logical as Aristotle's formal logic.


Let give the whole sentence again (but this time with my translating it):   

Παρακαλῶ οὖν ὑμᾶς ἀδελφοί διὰ τῶν οἰκτιρμῶν τοῦ θεοῦ παραστῆσαι τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν θυσίαν ζῶσαν ἁγίαν εὐάρεστον τῷ θεῷ τὴν λογικὴν λατρείαν ὑμῶν. Καὶ μὴ συσχηματίζεσθαι [OR συσχηματίζεσθε] τῷ αἰῶνι τούτῳ, ἀλλὰ μεταμορφοῦσθαι [OR μεταμορφοῦσθε] τῇ ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ νοὸς [ὑμῶν] εἰς τὸ δοκιμάζειν ὑμᾶς τί τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ εὐάρεστον καὶ τέλειον.

I'm beside you, calling you, sisters, brothers - through the deep compassion of God - to present your bodies, a sacrifice, alive, holy, blessed pleasures on God, your service of logical statementistics as with Aristotle.  And that doesn't mean to go together with the schema of this age; rather it means to re-form yourselves by mental newness from above into your opinions which are the good wishes of God and are blessed pleasures and finished to maturity.

Now I've run out of time for today again.  So let me just say this again:

Paul's approaches to men (vs women), to logic (vs rhetoric and dialectic and such), and to elitist centricism (vs feminisms and pluralisms and multiculuralisms) seem suspiciously like Aristotle's phallogocentrism.  Where I'm going with all of this, if time allows some other day, is this:  Paul's encounters with a Jew named Joshua and his apprentices began to unravel much of the Aristotelian(-like) system.  That was quite a carnival (or two).

St. Paul and Carnivals

Paul often gets paired with Aristotle, and below you'll find a bit more on Paul.  But first a quick review of Aristotle so as to consider the pairing of the two.  In a previous post, we ran through some questions about Aristotle's upbringing and motivations.  In this post, we want to look at his system for apprehending his world.  Then, we'll come back as quickly as we can to Paul.

If you read the extant texts of the entire corpus of what Aristotle wrote (which I chose to do for a dissertation), then you get his pure and precise categories.  Scholars such as Sara J. Newman are good to point out how sometimes the categories are inconsistent and are would-be "pure and precise categories."  But I'm talking about what Aristotle, the author himself, intended.  He intended practical things by his precise and pure categories.  He intended separations, mapping Nature into its hierarchy.  He intended a system of separations, into binaries, into a taxonomy of this but not that.  It's not just feminist scholars who recognize that Aristotle's pure and precise intention was phallologocentrism.  It is nevertheless mostly feminist scholars who see that the singular intention of Aristotle is yet his theme with three variations.  Clarice Lispector calls his intended theme, or phallogocentrism, that “system of inflexible last judgment, which does not permit even a second of incredulity.” And now we get technical as we look at three various aspects of the system:

One variation on the phallogocentric theme was masculinism.  Aristotle was quite intentional when he wrote of τά φαλλικά [ta phallika].  Most English translators have merely transliterated that the "phallic," but Aristotle purely and precisely meant "what's blatantly penis-esque" and used the word to write about the shape and the penetrating force of the rule by males in the Greek city states.

Another variation on the phallogocentric theme was the use of language to map nature. Aristotle was definitely intentional when he wrote of λογική [logike].  Most English translators have simply put English letters together for the Greek sounds to come up with "logic."  But Aristotle coined this word from λόγος [logos], a huge and overdetermined concept for knowing.  Logos in it's simplest sense meant "statement"; but Aristotle tightened up the word a bit with the suffix -ική so that his neologism became λογ-ική [log-ike] or, to translate, "statement-ista."  Aristotle intended this new logic to be the pure and precise method of stacking statements together from premise to premise to forced conclusion, syllogistically or by means of a syllogism [or ὁ συλλογισμός].  (This method of logic, for Aristotle, trumped the method of dialektike of his teachers.  Dialektike is the method that Plato had his own teacher Socrates using, a question-asking method of drawing truth and selecting and electing knowledge out of the one being asked.  It's a method perhaps developed by a kept-woman, a non-Greek kept-woman named Aspasia, who taught dialektike to men such as Socrates.  Plato writes glowingly of Aspasia, and Socrates praises her, but Aristotle who mentions many women never says a thing about her.  Of course, Aristotle, in The Metaphysics, uses logike to explain that dialektike is a less pure and a less precise method than his superior method of logike.  Moreover, to begin The Rhetoric, Aristotle writes that rhetorike is an antistrophos of dialektike -- the two counterpart methods of knowing both inferior to his logike.)

Thirdly, Aristotle was intentional when writing of κέντρον [kentron].  This has come down to us in partially-transliterated English translation as something like "centrality."  What Aristotle meant by the word was a "central pricking point"; his teacher Plato had used it for that part of the circle-drawing compass that sticks into the papyrus or the clay.  The elite Athenians, such as Solon, in Aristotle's Athenian Constitution got the point.  What Aristotle intended for his Greek students in the all-boy Aka-Demy was to have Greece, Athens centrally, to be the center of the world.  His student Alexander the Great got the point.  But Aristotle never intended his elite system to be ours in any way.

So now we can think about Paul.  If you read the entire extant corpus of what Paul wrote (which I was forced to do as a child), then you might start thinking about Aristotle.

As compared to Aristotle, Paul had a much better family upbringing on the one hand, and a much less pure upbringing on the other hand.  Aristotle lost his mother when he was very young and had to be raised by an uncle; his mother was from a elite family and may have left his father, a physician in the Macedonian king's court, with more than enough means for the teenager Aristotle to join Plato's famous Academy in Athens.  Paul writes of his own history to a group of Greek Jews and Jewish Greeks in Philippi, Macedonia, where Aristotle grew up.  Paul was also of a pure-breed family.  A Hebrew of Hebrews, he boasts and goes on about his clan of Benjamin and his penis circumcision that marked him as the Jewish Abraham's and /or Israel's great great great (you get the idea) grand-son.  He also had some elite education:  Paul was an excellent Torah student of the Separatists, also known as the purist Pharisees, the holiest פרושים [perushim].

What makes Paul a bit different from Aristotle is how impure he was.  Paul was not only a Jew but he was also a citizen of Rome.  Furthermore, not only did he speak Aramaic but he also was facile with Latin and Greek.  He was adept in his understanding of the holy Hebrew Law and other Scripture; and he knew the Hellene translation well, as well.  Paul could use Greek like a Greek, whether that was engaging Greeks in Greek rhetoric in Athens or sending Greek native speakers in their native Greek city states letters.  He could navigate between cultures, being all things to all for persuasive winning purposes, and he could mold culture by what he said and what he wrote.  He was able to bring Jews and Greeks together (i.e., one half-Greek Jewish boy named Timo-Theos "honorer of god(s)" he was able to make more pure by having his penis circumcised).  He would write of the advantages of the Jew first, and would write of the appropriation of Jewishness by the Greeks.    

Now I've run out of time for today.  But let me just say this.  Paul's approaches to men (vs women), to logic (vs rhetoric and dialectic and such), and to elitist centricism (vs feminisms and pluralisms and multiculuralisms) seem suspiciously like Aristotle's phallogocentrism.  Where I'm going with all of this, if time allows some other day, is this:  Paul's encounters with a Jew named Joshua and his apprentices began to unravel much of the Aristotelian(-like) system.  That was quite a carnival (or two).

Of Paul and Pooh, Language and Logic

Yesterday's post left this suggestion that Paul borrowed his nasty word skubala (σκύβαλα) from Jesus. What do you think? Did Paul write using language that was not entirely politically correct? A few things should be clarified and carefully noticed about skubala before looking at an even more startling word that Paul borrowed.

First, the Jesus (or Joshua) whose writings Paul may be reading is the ostensible son of Sirach ( בן סירא). And the son of Jesus, the grandson of Sirach, is the self-identified translator of the writings of Sirach. All of the synoptic gospel translators (Mark, Matthew, and Luke - writing about that other Jesus) quote from this translated LXX Book of Sirach even if none quotes the word Paul appropriates. So we'd do well to see what the first translated Jesus supposedly says in Hebrew (even if the texts are lost) and how his son translates (and purports to translate) that into Greek while living in Egypt more than 100 years before Paul was born.

Second, it's not just the Greek word skubala (σκύβαλα) but how and why that particular word renders the Hebrew in a place like post-slavery Egypt that is fascinating. The word occurs nowhere prior to this use by the son of Jesus. Sylvie Honigman at the University of Tel Aviv in reading one history of the LXX suggests the Jewish translators didn't follow either the Exodus paradigm or the Alexandrian (a neo-aristotelian) paradigm but rather the Homeric paradigm when translating. Maybe Jesus's son, in translating, is coining the word from some of Homer's works. Paradigms aside, there seems enough extant lexical material to suggest this. For example, in the Odyssey, Agamemnon recounts his betrayal and murder by his wife Clytemnestra: "I threw (ballon, βάλλον) my hands around the sword as I died, but the dog-eyed (kunopis, κυνῶπις) one turned away, and, though I was on my way to the house of Hades, she didn't dare close my eyes or shut my mouth with her hands. So nothing else is more dreadful or more dog-like [kunteron, κύντερον] than a woman...." And in the Iliad, Zeus says to his wife "Nothing's more disgustingly doglike than you." [Ou seokunteron allo, οὐ σέοκύντερον ἄλλο]). And Helen has already mourned, "Slutty bitch that I am!" [eskekunopidos, ἔσκεκυνώπιδος]). If the Greek word is a translator's neologism, an awakening of dogged sexism, then a hint to its meaning as "pooh" comes from a counterpart word in the proverb of Jesus. The entire proverb (27:4) reads: Ἑν σείσματι κοσκίνου διαμένει κοπρία, οὕτως σκύβαλα ἀνθρώπου ἐν λογισμῷ αὐτοῦ. This has been translated into English by the Revised Standard Version committee as follows: "When a sieve is shaken, the refuse remains; so a man's filth remains in his thoughts." The word σκύβαλα is translated "filth," and the word kopia (κοπρία) "refuse." The two words work parabolically or appositively in comparison, in interlation, to define and refine one another analogically. It's sort of like what the Miller Analogies Test measures, except the proverbial parallels are to be extended, personally, to the reader's own life. The language is to be profound. What is lost in the RSV translation is the bitch-female-dog connotations of the former word (when just looking at Homeric cognates); alas, as mentioned, the Hebrew original is completely gone. We can, however, measure whether the RSV "refuse" gains much in English translation by comparing how other LXX translators have rendered Hebrew with the Greek kopia (κοπρία). The Hebrew words so translated into Greek are domen (דמן ) and 'ashpoth (אשפת) with meanings of "dung" and "piles of poo." I think Benjamin G. Wright's English (NETS) translation of the Greek of the son of Jesus is not bad: "With the shaking of a sieve, refuse remains--so a person' offal in his reasoning." But the Greek sounds more like this to me (in English): "In a shaken sifter remains a pile of crap--so does that scooped puppy poop, you mortal humans, in your own statements."

Third, then, when Paul uses skubala (σκύβαλα) in his letter to readers in Philippoi, he's already called out "the dogs" or perhaps "the bitches" (touS KUnas, τοὺς κύνας) to distinguish himself from his fellow Jews who were insisting on male (penis) circumcision as a necessary mark on the body. So he plays on this derogatory term by downplaying his own personal, physical heritage as "dog throw-up" if not "bitch shit" (SKUbala, σκύβαλα). To see the gendered issues here is not too much of a stretch. (It's not, I'm saying, much at all like Sigmund Freud, as the-rapist, discussing penis envy that isn't really there.) The language Paul chooses is dirty on purpose.

Fourth, Paul seems extremely interested as Jesus was in adult human conversion, in personal transformation. I'm talking now about the Jesus to whom Paul was committed, the one whose opening word for Mark, his first translator, was metanoeite (μετανοεῖτε). It means something like "change your mind, re-think everything!" This brings us to a second, perhaps more startling word that Paul borrowed. He borrowed a word that Aristotle coined when human language and when a human statement (i.e. logos, λόγος) was, for Aristotle, not enough. The word is "logic" (or logike, λογικὴ).

(I've gone on elsewhere about how the -ic (-ικὴ) suffix is dirty and sexist. It was so dirty that LXX translators seemed to avoid it as politically incorrect. And so when tiptoeing around words like "log-ic," "rhetor-ic," and "erot-ic" and therefore even "eros," they only slipped twice.)

So what do you think? Why does Paul slip in "logic" (or logike, λογικὴ) in his letter to Roma? It's in Romans 12:1-2, where Paul is talking about the mind, change, and re-thinking everything. Here's the text:

Παρακαλῶ οὖν ὑμᾶς ἀδελφοί διὰ τῶν οἰκτιρμῶν τοῦ θεοῦ παραστῆσαι τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν θυσίαν ζῶσαν ἁγίαν εὐάρεστον τῷ θεῷ τὴν λογικὴν (i.e. "logical") λατρείαν ὑμῶν. Καὶ μὴ συσχηματίζεσθαι [OR συσχηματίζεσθε] τῷ αἰῶνι τούτῳ, ἀλλὰ μεταμορφοῦσθαι [OR μεταμορφοῦσθε] τῇ ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ νοὸς [ὑμῶν] εἰς τὸ δοκιμάζειν ὑμᾶς τί τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ εὐάρεστον καὶ τέλειον.

Here's the RSV English for comparison:

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [λογικὴν] worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Do you think "spiritual" renders "logic" well? Is it really a politically incorrect word? Or does the RSV (or your favorite translation) make it otherwise? What's Paul doing with language and logic?

Awaking the Dead Hebrew, Part III

Is this ever easy? I mean before I can even get to this part III of the series, David Ker is challenging whether language learning programs like the ones I try to run can succeed and whether English like I try to write it is grammatical. Last thing he said is, "Dang. I think this is about transitivity." (Did Shakespeare say, "Dang"?) I think Ker is still motivated to learn Hebrew backwards. Last thing Mike Aubrey said about that is, "what would be better is if they combined the linguistic stuff with the Greek & Hebrew stuff so that Biblical language study was more intuitive and acquisition-like."

Doesn't leave me much to say. I've got my Kenneth Croft Readings on English as a Second Language: For Teachers and Teacher Trainees right here, and my Wilhelm Gesenius Hebräisches u. Chaldäisches Handwörterbuch over there. All I can think is, "As old as these books are, why aren't they obsolete? Why isn't Aristotle obsolete for them too? And for Noam Chomsky? And Steven Krashen? And even for someone like Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. whose post-Chomsky RRG is 'motivated' by 'analysizing' and 'capturing' the 'interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics' of non-English languages so that one of RRG's 'distinctive features' can be 'the bidirectionality of the mapping between syntax and semantics'?"

That's a lot of mumbo jumbo, to use Ishmael Reed's crazy phrase (although he has different meanings that you have to learn). If you think this is an insider conversation, or an inside joke (maybe it is), then you might catch on soon. If you're catching on, then you see how limiting binaries can be, how stifling features are, how theoretically in abstraction (and how much of a pedantic choke-hold on practical stuff) some linguistics can be.

The thesis statement in this Part III is this: "Aristotelian linguistics is not too different from Aristotelian logic, which is not too different from Aristotle's silencing of females and of anyone who didn't acquire his kind of Greek." In Part IV, let's look at the Helen of Hellenism and hear how she learns language. Let's really do listen to Rahab (not) of the Hebrews and watch how she learns Hebrew backwards.

Awaking the Dead Hebrew, Part II

David Ker has a plan: "I’m going to learn Hebrew backwards."

And in this post, I have an opportunity, the opportunity to continue an earlier post "Awaking the Dead Hebrew, Part I."

What I really want to say is this: how linguists think of "language" really seems to determine what they think about how to "know" or to "learn" a language (like dead Hebrew).

(A while back, Mike Aubrey posted on "knowing" a language, which starts to descend from linguistics down into philosophy, and further down into epistemology. How do you know, or know that you know? So now I'm trying to get back to my claim that What you think you know language is sort of spells out How you think you can come to know a particular language. I'm going to postpone that a little by suggesting an add-on to the thesis and by telling some stories. The add-on is this: Generally, male linguists (which are most of them), as early as Aristotle, think of language as something that inherently belongs, by nature, to them--something at which they are deeply competent / something for which they are not blamed if their performance is imperfect; something acquired / not learned. Mike, in comments on Part I, wants me to acknowledge Joan Bresnan's work. So, now the stories. First, against charges that Noam Chomsky's a "traditionalist, . . . an old-fashioned patriarch [who. . . ] never really understood what the feminist movement was all about," Chomsky claims he hired Bresnan and Donca Steriade, according to biographer Robert Franklin Barsky. Maybe this was Mike's point, but I'm not so sure Bresnan has been a good Chomskian, like Steven Krashen has been. Seems like Steriade found her way back to MIT, but from her publications, did not find her way back to Chomsky. Second, women and men can participate in Aristotelian or Platonic--i.e., traditionalist masculinist--linguistics; and most do.

Last week, I had lunch with a Ph.D. in Linguistics who's a native English speaker who's been a student of Japanese in Japan and a user of French in the U.S. and in France, confessing "after a decade in French, I still don't know how to get the writing style right"; and with a Ph.D. in Physics from a U.S. university who's a native speaker of Japanese, confessing "I don't know how to speak English properly, exactly." To make them feel better, I cracked a joke in Japanese, which they both laughed at politely--laughed at, because my Japanese is really funny stuff since I don't know it well; and politely, because I hadn't made fun of her French or his English. During dessert, we talked about my "knowing" dead ancient Greek and Hebrew, but neither asked how. They were more interested in how one of my teachers, who had learned more directly from Tommy Wildcat, gave me some pointers on awaking nearly-dead Cherokee from the now-dead Elias Boudinot / Ga-li-ga-na? Watie).

I'm not sure anyone ever asked Mary Sidney Herbert or Julia Evelina Smith how they awoke dead Hebrew (although their translating is good proof that they did, and here's some blogging on the translating by Sidney and Smith).

I do understand that Ruth Behar is "somebody who understood displacement from an early age" who learned Hebrew (as she had to learn her anthropology that breaks your heart) by "displacing" herself "to try to understand another" by "coming from the outside. . . while trying to become an insider." Behar's father, who reads the Torah, is not speaking to her; she calls it, "A nightmare: Seventy-five translated women are burning in the flames. And there my name, the name I took from my father, is burning too" (page 71).

I am fascinated to read how Mary Douglas starts in awaking dead Hebrew, saying: "It will be painful and a failure." Some time back, I shared this fascination with you, saying:

Douglas is "going to change Hebrew by learning it. Of course, she must change too."

You remember, I went on to conjecture more, saying:

1. There’s no law that tells her What she must learn to “learn” Hebrew.
2. There’s no enforcement officer forcing her to Do certain drills or exercises a certain way.
3. There’s not even a living speaker of ancient Hebrew to negotiate with her various meanings.
4. Rather, there is a good bit of listening, hypothesizing, observing, reading, did I say guessing, failing, and hurting she must do. She may listen to texts and she may read living and dead experts. But she cannot stay the same person and still learn Hebrew. The how requires adult human conversion to one profound degree or another.

Let me backtrack again to the thesis statement of this post: how linguists think of "language" really seems to determine what they think about how to "know" or to "learn" a language (like dead Hebrew).

Mary Sidney Herbert and Julia Evelina Smith and Ruth Behar and Mary Douglas think of language (even dead Hebrew) much differently from linguists such as Noam Chomsky and Steven Krashen.

Such linguists think of language as this abstract thing. At least, it's an abstractable thing. Hebrew of the Bible, for example, is what's written in the Bible. At least, to begin with, it's אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי or אלפבית. Especially if you're a man (and not a woman such as Mary Sidney Herbert or Julia Evelina Smith or Ruth Behar or Mary Douglas), you don't really have to change. You don't really have to go from the outside in because you're already an insider. (I'm running out of time to say more, or motivation to make this clear just yet. So Part III is coming soon enough. I suppose I may say something about Rahab, who had to learn [not acquire] the language of men, including the Hebrew of some of them. I do think Ker's on to something useful; more then soon enough.)

Awaking the Dead Hebrew, Part I

My friend Linda speaks Hebrew with her kids everyday even though her mother tongue is American English and she grew up bilingual English / Indonesian. They live in Israel, where her husband, the kids' daddy, grew up. They only speak English when they have to.

The conventional wisdom about language learning is that kids do it so much more naturally than adults do post-puberty. "Linda's husband and kids acquired Hebrew. Linda had to get it differently, with much more of a struggle." But there are language theorists who believe (following Aristotle's logic) that language is innate and therefore naturally awakes in any adult as well as any child. Noam Chomsky with his binary "competence / performance" is one such theorist; and the proto-Chomskian Steven Krashen, likewise, has this logical separation "acquisition / learning."

The main problem with Chomsky's construct of language as innate competence that is awaked in performance is that he has to abstract just what "competence" looks like. All the world ever sees or hears is a person's sloppy writing or ever-imperfect speech. Krashen has to do the same thing; except he abstracts the ostensibly natural order of acquisition that should be monitored lest faulty learning gets in the way. What makes Chomsky's and Krashen's ideal Platonism so Aristotelian in reality is that Noam, Steven, and Aristotle all believe that language is the property of a homo sapien and not any other species of animal--Aristotle takes it a step further and says only members of the super race, the Athenian style Greek men, actually speak right and can write correctly; all the others are plant-like (such as females) or are like lesser animals (such as BarBarian men and the men who are Soloi, who mess up the Greek grammar).

Fascinatingly, ironically, even though Noam, Steven, and Aristotle say that this is all natural-born stuff, they feel like they have to write books on it and give lectures on it and teach it to their students who cannot acquire it so naturally as they have. (There are other ways of learning that these three men won't touch; I'll look at them in another post soon. Here's a quick peek at them for those of you who like to read ahead. I'll try to translate some of the ideas in the linked article in less academic English.)

For Linda's kids and husband, native speakers of Hebrew in Israel, there's this other thing: when they go to the museum in Jerusalem and try to read the ancient Hebrew scrolls, they become as non-native as she is. Sure, every one of them can more or less recognize the letters and pronounce them rather fluently. There's just this question of whether they really are awake to the now-dead language.

I say they can be more awake to ancient Hebrew, and that they can awaken it. In another post soon, I'll suggest some of the ways.

HT David Ker for getting us to think about "Learning Hebrew Backwards."

Shiddy Draft

Shiddy Draft

That last post was one.

If you’ve read Ann Lamott’s Bird by Bird,
then you know what I mean.

If you’ve read Ann Lamott’s Bird by Bird,
you get what she means.

If you read my last post,
then you know what I mean.

If you listen to me,
then it’s a “shiddy draft”
because I,
a native speaker
of English,
flap my “t”s at the onset
of my
unstressed
syllables.

If you listen to Peter Ladefoged,
depending on when he’s talking,
it’s a North American English
alveolar tap.

Shoddy draft
sounds shotty.

Nothing is sound.

If you’re an INTP
like me
then you may
like me more
if I don’t like
to state the obvious
(and, to state the obvious,
then, neither do you).

Don’t you think
it’s weird that
the graduate student
advisors in
the English Department
at my university
recommend
Ann Lamott’s book
to Ph.D. students
writing their dissertations?

And she never
finished college.

Michel de Montaigne
était bien avec le mondain
et ainsi est l'un de mes professeurs
sur mon
comité de dissertation

answers.com est en français
et en anglais mais
c'est des bureaux est à
New York City et Jérusalem pas Paris.
Aristote n'a eu aucun mot pour ceci.
Mes amis semblent plus de raisonnable.

Projet Merdeux

The Big Mind of Aristotle and Shaq

Michael Pakaluk reminds us today that Shaquille O'Neal wants to be known as Aristotle because of his "big mind."

Since Shaq said that back in 2000, what has his big mind been thinking? Well, he has been thoughtful enough to want to help kids (despite what Kate Harding says). And his wife Shaunie does seem to know his thinking well enough to petition against his filing for divorce, a split which won't help their four children and two step kids one little bit (despite the doubtful dirt Paula Froelich is throwing at his reputation).

I do think that Ms. Kil Ja Kim has a bigger mind (less "riddled with racial-sexual anxiety") than either Aristotle or Shaq.

Plato's Possessions

Many claims stated as absolute desiderata

in the Bible translation debates among evangelicals

would not make sense

if the target language were other than English. . . .,

which shows how Anglo-centric the evangelical debates have been. . .

Surely evangelicals must not mandate

a translation philosophy on theological grounds

that would exclude, even inadvertently,

many of the world’s languages.

--Karen H. Jobes

The theological grounding of the translation philosophy of some evangelicals is a certain foundation. But the linguistic grounding of the translation philosophy of other evangelicals is the same certain foundation. And the anglo-centrism of the evangelical debates over translation has a more focused and equally-shared center. That is, whether the evangelical argues more for formal equivalence or more for dynamic (or “translation”) equivalence, the anglo-centric theology and the anglo-centric linguistics are centered in ancient Greek logic. Such grounds are the same sand; and such a center is, to use a Greek word, σκότος.

So when Wayne Leman at Better Bibles Blog writes his latest installment on “translation equivalence,” he’s escaped neither the methodological philosophy of the ancient Greeks nor the results of their logic. That’s not to say that Leman fails to do anything good. As a matter of fact, he’s friendly, uses personable examples, and invites other people to participate out of their own subjectivities. But we pause to read a linguistic concept as benign as “possession.” Let me just say that after twenty-one years of being paid to teach English as a second language to adults in the U.S. Academy, “possessives” as an English thing is something I’m not unfamiliar with; and we teach it in all its glorious complexities. How would we get around the concept? And why would we? Now, while those are both very interesting questions (I’m so glad you asked), they’re queries really beside the point.

The issue for translators such as Leman is whether there is some universal transcendent category which all languages share (at least English and Greek, and English and Hebrew). If so, then there’s also “translation equivalence.” Do you catch the logic? Desideratum 1: “possession” is a phenomenon of all languages. Desideratum 2: English and Greek and Hebrew are languages. Desideratum 3: English and Greek and Hebrew possess “possession.” And in front and behind all of those Desiderata is this one Desideratum X: If you can come up with the syllogism Desiderata 1 through 3, then X = the ideal we can call “translation equivalence.” (Now, lest you’ve not been paying attention to the series, “translation equivalence” is equivalent to “dynamic equivalence.” But “translation equivalence” is not equal to “literal translation”; for “literal translation” is the translation equivalence of “formal equivalence”; and, therefore, “translation equivalence” is the top dog in the hierarchy.) For the logic junkies, this is both deduction and induction. And for those looking for logical fallacies, you may be hard pressed except to note that we were taught in kindergarten not to mix metaphors, even metaphors we live by, such as both deduction with induction.

I’m being a little silly here. It’s my way of trying to be friendly. Kind of like nervous laughter when playing with dynamite so no one gets any body parts blown off. Okay then, we remember Plato played with shadows. Powerful things that would prove the light. The linguistic desideratum we call in English “possessives” is such a shadow. We really want it to be the real deal. We know our ancestors, for instance, dealt with slavery (the possession of some human beings by others); and that our great great great grandfathers dealt with spousal abuse (thank God that’s over now: the husband possessing his wife, or in the case of many of our biblical patriarchy, his wives). When it comes to language, English and Greek and Hebrew, then, how could we do without “possession”? Which, again, is a really good question. It’s kind of like Kenneth Pike’s questions about those (yes exceptional) languages that do not have many numbers (with which to do logical math, the kind of logic, Pike says people really are over, even when translating). But, for now, that’s just not the question we’re asking. We’re asking How we could even imagine a language that doesn’t have “possession”? Our question is not about “the text”; it’s about us. How could we imagine? Why would we? Are we trying to come up with little obscure counter-examples to enter the debate of the evangelicals on the side of the formal people? Well, no. The formal and the dynamic are stuck on Greek logic which is the translational equivalence of Anglo-centrism. What we’re trying to do is to come down from our high horse for a minute. Or, if we put that in Trojan, we’d say (with our hands over our mouths): “There’s no one hiding inside the gift horse—Please don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!!” Plato fell for that, of course, because he hated the hidden meanings of ambiguous epic poetry, and because he wanted to keep his slaves and have his wives too. Plato never listened to Lydia H. Liu, who refused his proposal for marriage, and who went on to publish these audacious words in English: “one does not translate between equivalents; rather, one creates tropes of equivalence in the middle zone of translation between the host and guest languages. This middle zone of hypothetical equivalence, which is occupied by neologistic imagination, becomes the very ground for change.” Oh yeah, I almost forget, Plato didn’t want to change either. His student Aristotle didn’t either, and so he set out (with new logic—the old stuff evangelical Bible translators use) to teach little Alexander to become Great and to teach the world Greek.

Only, Plato and Aristotle never counted on Matthew translating into Greek, hosting another’s Aramaic, and all the while listening very carefully to this very different teacher who actually wanted his students to change their thinking and the way they thought about his words and the ways by which they had to change those words of his by their translation. The strange irony of that is evangelical Bible translators never counted on that either. Matthew gives his sympathies. It’s hard to humble yourself when you’ve got English and logic on your side. It’s hard to change darkness for light, sand for bedrock.

(feminist) rhetorical questions for us voters

Jim Aune at The Blogora thinks it's all rhetoric. Barack Obama has a "winning formula" while Hillary Clinton "can't give a decent speech." So Aune gets us re-reading Karlyn Kohrs Campbell's essay "The Discursive Performance of Femininity: Hating Hillary" in the first issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs (1998): 1-20.

Campbell says there:
"Hillary Rodham Clinton's style of public advocacy typically omits all of the discursive markers by which women publicly enact their femininity. Her tone is usually impersonal . . . her ideas unfold deductively . . . all kinds of evidence is used. . . . she is impassioned but very rarely emotional. . . . [She is unable to] feminize her rhetorical style, to perform a culturally defined feminine role publicly. . . . [while her audiences have a] failure to appreciate [her true power to persuade]. . . . If we reject all those who lack the feminizing skills of an Elizabeth Hanford Dole, we shall deprive ourselves of a vast array of talent" (pages 1, 6, 15).

In Iowa yesterday, did Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards have Ms. Dole's "feminizing skills"?

Do only women such as Ms. Clinton and Ms. Dole have to "publicly enact femininity" to be persuasive?

Or have frontrunners Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee exhibited "discourse markers" and exuded a "tone" that are more "personal," if they also use (in a more manly way) all kinds of evidence and are also more (masculinely and, therefore, more) logically deductive?

Is John F. Hobbins fair in comparing a rhetorically savvy "mother in Israel" with Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee?

Can Hugo Schwyzer be so sure of himself when implying (1) that Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee contrast greatly with really "handsome, articulate men [such as Mr. Romney and Mr. Edwards] who [therefore more] struggle with slickness"? And (2) that "a debate between Obama and Mike Huckabee would be a thing to behold; [because they are more like women -- less handsome, and less articulate, rather like] two consummate 'outsiders', two men running on two differing visions of hope, two men who have an extraordinary ability to connect with a wide variety of people"?

What does feministing rhetoric really sound like for (or against) Ms. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Huckabee, and other candidates?

(and here's another in quick update) Can you answer Virginia Rutter's questions: "Who votes their gender?" and "What does this mean?"