Path: news.nzbot.com!not-for-mail
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 20:49:07 +0200
From: Julien Pourtet <yulinux@gmx.net>
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 (X11/20040506)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: Meaning of "folks"
References: <BCC658EA.457F9%gnarlodiousNULL@VOID.invalid.yahoo.com> <c7r3k8$10j$1@news-reader5.wanadoo.fr>
In-Reply-To: <c7r3k8$10j$1@news-reader5.wanadoo.fr>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Lines: 43
Message-ID: <40a271a4$0$13088$636a15ce@news.free.fr>
Organization: Guest of ProXad - France
NNTP-Posting-Date: 12 May 2004 20:49:09 MEST
NNTP-Posting-Host: 81.56.200.70
X-Trace: 1084387749 news5-e.free.fr 13088 81.56.200.70:10092
X-Complaints-To: abuse@proxad.net
Xref: news.nzbot.com alt.languages.english:274
John of Aix wrote:
> message de news: BCC658EA.457F9%gnarlodiousNULL@VOID.invalid.yahoo.com...
>
>>I've noticed lately the word "folks" is undergoing a drastic change of
>>meaning in my lifetime. I hear it used by talk radio,TV hosts and even
>>George Bush in the exact opposite way it was traditionally used.
>>
>>Traditionally:
>>simple people, parents, kin, neighbors, peasants, landsman, countryman
>>
>>
>>Modern:
>>"They need to extract information from these folks" (terrorists)
>>"These folks are on death row for 20 years now" (prisoners)
>>"The folks at Walt Disney..." (CEO's)
>>"a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who
>>committed this act" (terrorists)
>>
>>What's going on with this word? Is "Folk Music" now "Terrorist Music"? Is
>
> it
>
>>an insidious propaganda campaign to deprive us of the comfort of "folks"
>
> and
>
>>leave us parentless, kinless and neighborless? An attack on the traditions
>>of language preparing us for the a New American Century?
>
>
> Well it has come simply to mean 'people' as you show. Perhaps one of the
> reasons is to put a friendly tone into what would otherwise be an unfriendly
> statement by hinting at a familiar, avuncular concern.
Well, that's the point. It tends to have a new meaning, indeed. Most of
the words are likely to suffer from such changes when they are used with
high frequency. This is also a valid argument concerning the
pronunciation of very commong words. This is also true about
orthographic changes.
--
Julien
|
|