Writes Amanda Hess in "'We Took a Chonce,' and Other Dispatches From Fandom/In defense of One Direction, Twitter teens and screaming women everywhere" (NYT).
The "She" who "contextualizes" is Kaitlyn Tiffany, whose new book is “Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It."
We were just talking about that word yesterday — "contextualize." Remember? "[Stacey] Abrams immediately tried to 'contextualize' her remarks..." That's the post where I got into the Southern idiom "Bless her heart," but several commenters wanted to go after "contextualize." I remembered and am getting to that today. Let's talk about "contextualizing."
In the Kaitlyn Tiffany book, something transitory and light — teen idols — is given depth and dimension — or so we're told — by "contextualizing" it within something big and profound — human psychology. In the case of Stacey Abrams, she said something she totally meant to say — Georgia is "the worst state in the country to live" — and she tried to turn it into something sound and empathetic with information about real-life living conditions. You don't want a governor who just thinks the state sucks, but you might want a governor who sees problems that can be solved.
"Contextualize" is one of those creations achieved with the suffix "-ize" — which were highly disparaged back in the 1960s when I went to high school. Didn't Strunk and White rail against "finalize"? Ah, yes:
"-ize. Do not coin verbs by adding this tempting suffix. Many good and useful verbs do end in -ize. . . . But there is a growing list of abominations: containerize, prioritize, finalize, to name three. . . . Why say ‘utilize’ when there is the simple, unpretentious word use?” (p. 50)
Ha ha. I remembered that for more than 50 years! And as long as I'm mentally back in the 1960s — have I ever left? — I've got to quote you Bob Dylan's famous "finalize":
I ain’t lookin’ to block you upPresumably, Strunk and White would be okay with "advertise," but they'd hate "categorize" almost as much as "finalize."
Shock or knock or lock you up
Analyze you, categorize you
Finalize you or advertise you
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you
By the way, the oldest meaning of "context" is "The weaving together of words and sentences" (OED). That's now obsolete, but it made me wonder, for the first time, if there's a connection between "text" and "textile." Yes! It all goes back to:
teks-
Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to weave"....
So... to ask the Strunk and White question: Why say "contextualize" when there is the simple, unpretentious word use? The simple, unpretentious word is: WEAVE.
When you're tempted to write "contextualize," see if you can rewrite using "weave." And if you've got any other extra time, I would love to see a new verse of "All I Really Want to Do" using the word "contextualize": I don't want to contextualize you....
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17 comments:
In case you're about to point this out, I can see that "advertise" ends "-ise" not "-ize" but it is the same ending.
The OED puts the etymology like this: "< Anglo-Norman and Middle French avertiss-, advertiss-, lengthened stem of avertir, advertir advert v. From an early date the ending was frequently either apprehended as or assimilated to -ize suffix."
And the historical examples of the word include many where it is spelled with a "z":
1750 H. Walpole Corr. (ed. 3) II. 374 A citizen had advertized a reward for the discovery of a person who had stolen sixty guineas.
1785 W. Cowper Task iv. 500 Vain th' attempt To advertize in verse a public pest.
1803 Med. & Physical Jrnl. 9 189 Shops where ‘injection powders’ are advertized in the windows.
To contextualize means to engage in sophistry.
We do send teks messages.
Reminded me of Rachel's English. She has videos that help non native American English speakers sound more natural.
I like the word "spin" myself.
Breezing through the clientele
Spinning yarns that were so lyrical
Contextualize is for school textbooks.
So are we just going to ignore analyze?
I ain't looking to contextualize you,
Plagiarize you, or reprise you
Satirize you, improvise you,
Idealize or immortalize you.
There's a body of literature concerning contextualization among scholars of missions (i.e. the activity and theory utitilized (ha!) by missionaries. Google Paul Hiebert for an example.
www. >>> wwc. : the world wide contextualization.
The "She" who "contextualizes" is Kaitlyn Tiffany, whose new book is “Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It."
So she's stealing credit from Al Gore?
And here I've spent decades being told it was porn that created the modern internet.
Fangirls, is it, then? Or does she mean Only Fans?
Prioritize and fraternize, mesmerize and polarize.
The study of history is the study of context. Which makes it ironic when people wail that slavery or genocide are put in contexts--contextualized. In the study of history contextualization is the farthest thing from sophistry.
I don't care a fig for the distinction between -ize and -ise except in the context of the evolving language.
Often the left remove context (truth) to alter and manipulate. Why - we even have Adam Schitt(D) who actually alters text messages for his cause.
But - if the left get caught saying something stupid, they whine & say - 'hey you took me out of context.' whaaaa. cry me a river.
House Committee Admits Schiff Doctored Jan. 6 Text From Jim Jordan
"It is a persistent sexist attitude that flattens the fangirl’s perspective into inarticulate shrieking. “Though the criticism of fangirls is that they become tragically selfless and one-track-minded,” Tiffany writes, “the evidence available everywhere I look is that they become self-aware and creatively free.""
Illustrating the Althouse theorem that anything described as distinctive to women must be presented as superior.
"once dismissed as hysterical teeny-boppers, they were later rehabilitated by the empowering winds of poptimism before stan culture complicated their role yet again, establishing pop music fans as among the internet’s most powerful and feared operators."
So, still hysterical, now hysterically spreading hysteria and fear via social media.
"it can be a lifeline for a lonely and powerless teenager, a site of reflection for a middle-aged mom or a wonderful excuse for anyone to scream into the void."
What does this say about women's "equality" and "autonomy" and "agency"? Is a woman still a woman when no one hears her roar?
I'll say it again. For most of human history, women's lives have been so constricted that Freud could ask, "What does a woman want?", and us males all stopped and looked at the ground for a moment, and then shook our heads and went on with our affairs. Who knows? What difference would it make if we knew? But now women are liberated, and they are answering that question in the most credible way, with their actions. And men are just shaking our heads in stricken wonder, but Evolution is paying close attention. Taking notes, even.
Window dressing is contextialization
I thought the worst word was "subsidize" in lieu of "support" or "pay for" but then I saw a document that referred to "subsidization" which would be synonym for "subsidy."
I'm ashamed to defy Strunk and White. I will strive to improve my speech.
No irony intended. I must have five copies of that book. Shame on me. I still believe The Transitive Vampire series conveys many of their ideas to less literate audiences. I have seen it work.
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