AMITIAE - Friday 2 July 2013
Cassandra: Hamlet, Humpty Dumpty and the NSA |
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By Graham K. Rogers
Of all the articles I read, however, two stayed with me, perhaps because of their connections to Literature rather than the significance that linguistics experts attached to them.
Humpty Dumpty is not alone in the reassigning of meaning to words; and over time some definitions change (e.g. pitiful); while malapropisms will keep us amused if we understand.
As part of that, the PR effort has included some lying, some economies with the truth, and as Mike Masnick reports on TechDirt, some re-defining of words that we thought we all knew the meanings of. He comments on and links to a new NSA Lexicon in which many of the words listed have simply had their meanings changed.
Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. |
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