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Thread ID: 120649	2011-09-19 05:35:00	What's in a word?	tuiruru (12277)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1232178	2011-09-19 05:35:00	For ages now I've been jotting down examples from thee press or TV of what are often totally accidental juxtapositions of words. Some can be construed as being simultaneously both masterful understatement and totally obvious, (eg “Police are treating the discovery of a burning body beside the road as suspicious” (21st January)), others are grammatical errors (“.. the blessing of God's gift to the world of his only son born in a manger” - from a letter in The Listener – where were God's other sons born?), pig ignorance (..”the motorways of England – they're like...., they're like... arterial veins” - said by a cop ina current UK Motorway cop program (pun intended)), macabre (“This accident has cut people to to the core” - report about an accident involving a home made hovercraft home made hovercraft), coincidentally amusing names (eg a History Channel “Crime and Punishment” programme about the use of corporal punishment in Britain had a Professor Gary Slapper in the credits), use of PC type language (“Did anyone die unnecessarily? There may have been some whose outcome was significantly adversely affected” - from a report about Middlemore Hospital – death seems to me to be both adverse and significant) to banal (“The situation below us is very fluid” - live report from a helicopter watching the Japanese tsunami). At times though, you have to wonder whether things are more deliberate. A prime example is from the front page of today's NZ Herald (www.nzherald.co.nz). (and here I hope I don't fall foul of any forum rules – that definitely is not the intention). It's a report about the concerns some parents have about the content of current sex education lessons in NZ schools. Should the phrases “It's becoming a bit more graphic and a bit more hands-on, I guess” (hopefully these lessons are a bit more of a guess!) and “He said deciding how far to go was difficult, but the message from those teaching the classes was "they have to go in hard”” be used in this context? Unfortunate accident or creative wordsmithing? :confused:	tuiruru (12277)
1232179	2011-09-19 07:53:00	Had a quite chuckle when I read the bit about sex education being "hands on"	Whenu (9358)
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