“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Wednesday, August 26, 2015

"Shots Rang Out"

...is an appalling American euphemism for

SOMEONE SHOT SOMEONE

...and “rang”: a gunshot is so not a bell.

Remember the Gulf War reporting? “I can hear the sound of tracer fire around me.” =

I CAN TELL THAT BULLETS ARE RIPPING THROUGH PEOPLE'S FLESH

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Ergatives, yes! How easy it is to absent the agency of a white gunman.

D. E.M. said...

Kind of like "a woman was raped yesterday".... It's NEVER reported as "a man raped a woman yesterday".

Anonymous said...

The passive voice phrase in question sounds rather more British murder mystery parlance than American lexicon to me.

Actually it may be a valid representation of contemporary America. In the ultimate expression of a political state as a manifestation of Christendom's mandate to eschew individual responsibility, one may truthfully say that there are bullets flying everywhere and at all times in America, no one is individually responsible because they have the right to shoot, the state is not responsible because it allows all sorts of militarily weapons in circulation as well as extremist nuts to wield them, and American society is not collectively responsible as we all as have the Second Amendment. So if joyous shots do ring out, it is the sound of America singing!

Anonymous said...

Dealy Plaza?