When Israel re-arrested Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank town of Dura, the detainees faced familiar treatment.
They were blindfolded, handcuffed, insulted and kept in inhumane conditions. More unusual was that each man had a number written on his forehead.
Osama Shaheen, who was released in August after 10 months of administrative detention, told Middle East Eye that soldiers brutally stormed his house, smashing his furniture.
“The soldiers turned us from names into numbers, and every detainee had a number that they used to provoke him during his arrest and call him by number instead of name. To them, we are just numbers.”
You’re saying everyone in the comments is interpreting this headline as prescriptively as you pretend it is meant. Us using the same bar of prescriptiveness for your statement means you mean literally every single person is interpreting it as literal physical branding using a hot iron.
That’s a ridiculous statement, and just me disagreeing with you would make it incorrect, and several other people have tried explaining this to you. You refuse to admit that there’s such a thing as descriptive language or that “branding” can be used descriptively even if it lacked a meaning of a printed mark, which it does not.
“Moronic strawmen about linguistic purity”
You’re the one making that moronic strawman though. You’re denying the existence of descriptive language. This is what I meant earlier. You don’t even understand what that word means, so you don’t understand you’re doing it, which makes this rather hilarious, as your linguistic understanding is on the level of a 16-year old.
You’re trying to say the article is essentially propaganda against Israel. It’s not. To say Israel is branding people in this context is well within linguistic and journalistic standards, despite you not understanding what those standards are, even when half a dozen people are trying to explain them to you.
See the usage going down steadily throughout the 1900’s, until there’s a marked uptick in the 80’s, when the word resurfaced with a new context, that is currently the most colloquially used (brand as in trademark). That usage has lead to a semantic shift of the word, making it lose it’s connotation of “physical mutilation with a hot iron” as you can see from for example the playphrase.me link despite you pretending that all of the examples I used referred to objects instead of people. Is Candyman an object or a person, hmm? What about “I”? “They”? Hell, even the clip from a show that’s depicting a scene in the wild west, where there was actual branding, the quote isn’t referring to “branding” via a hot iron, but in the sense that it is most commonly used. Here in the headline of our article it just happens to overlap with making a physical mark on the people, which also fits the definition of “brand”.
You don’t understand linguistic or journalistic standards. You’re wrong in your childish assertions, but you’ll never be able to accept that.
No. That’s not what I said. You keep insisting on things I did not say. Of course not literally everyone is taking that interpretation. That’s like one level of an exceptional stance no one here is taking. But many are reading ‘branding’ it as such as exemplified by most of the comments in this thread. That’s undeniable.
There is no “half a dozen people explaining this”. There is you and one other user or so. There’s plenty of people holding my position in the comments here.
Listen pal, I grew up speaking English. Your cherry picked examples are nice though. To reiterate: there is no ambiguity when it comes to branding and products. This is the second time I’m stating this. Why do you keep bringing up objects and products to assert the shift in language here? We are all clear about this. The ambiguity is when the use is applied to human beings-people.
There is no need to bring up journalistic integrity or standards. MiddleEasteye is not the bastion of ultimate journalism. I’ve been around a while. This could just as well be an unintended consequence of not understanding the language. I didn’t attribute malice to the author, because I don’t make judgements before knowing the full story, unlike “filthy little genocide deniers”.
Oh so you don’t believe in the prescriptive view you’re so passionately arguing for, and instead use descriptive language, like a normal person, just like I’ve been arguing the headline is doing as well? Quelle surprise.
Of course not literally half a dozen people. Why on Earth would you think I meant literally what I wrote? It’s not like you do, either, so why are you applying this linguistic standard to me (and the headline) while ignoring it whenever something you say conflict with it? Is it perhaps because you don’t even recognise the thing I’m talking about, because your understanding of linguistics is on the level of a highschooler?
I’ll bet a lot of money I’ve been speaking English longer than you and have a better understanding of it, buddy. (Because I’m not really guessing anything, it’s all evident from the thread.)
Integrity? No no. We’re talking about how biased headlines are, aren’t we? Not why they’re biased, but whether they are or not. Having trouble keeping up?
You still won’t acknowledge that “branding” hasn’t had the connotation “burning hot iron” as it’s strongest connotation since the early 1900’s, which I’ve been saying for several times now. I’ve also shown you clear examples of “branding” being used to refer to people. Why do you keep ignoring half the shit that’s said to you? (This is a rhetorical question. I know why. Because I’m right in your understanding of philology, but you can’t just go “lol I was faking knowing about this shit, my bad”.)
This is literally what I challenged, but you just keep moving your goalposts instead of admitting how silly (and wrong) it was to say such a thing.
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They’re literally random, so that kinda conflicts with the whole “cherry-picked”, don’t you think?
Then there’s the Ngram viewer, which has literally millions of books in it. Then there’s the fact that no-one uses language in the prescriptive way you’ve demanded that the headline was written & interpreted it.
Almost as if you’ve deluded yourself the whole time into thinking that “everyone in the comments are assuming the literal and first dictionary definition of branding by physical mutilation”.
You said that. You can’t take it back, so you’re trying to justify it with “well obviously that’s not what I literally meant” while arguing that a news headline is to be interpreted not just literally, but in a singular way, and a singular way you’ve chosen, that you say everyone understands it in that context (despite literally no-one in the whole fucking thread having interpreted it like that). Then when people prove to you that first off language isn’t used as prescriptively as that (ie you made an argument concerning linguistic purity, not understanding how silly it is), and secondly that “brand” actually has printed in the definition, you kicked well off and now you’re just having a tantrum.
Do you take these words you said back?
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Still moving the goalposts. You just literally can not admit to being wrong. Must be hard, living like that. And it makes for an absolutely disgusting personality.
I didn’t cherrypick anything. None of the examples that organically come up from that site which has millions of clips through searching for the terms are cherrypicked. It’s literally the opposite of cherrypicking. :D Unlike your “oh but there’s another guy also trying to discredit this article criticising Israel and that has upvotes”, so it must mean that my asinine interpretation was correct".
People like you asserting that “everyone is interpreting it in this way I just made up that doesn’t conform to colloqual English, linguistic descriptivism or journalistic standards” doesn’t mean that it’s happening. I can find a bunch of Flat Earthers. Does that make the Earth flat? You too know you’ve been disingenuous in your rhetoric, but you just won’t be able to admit it.
You said:
Which was wrong. And now you’re desperately using the view of descriptivists while defending your argument about the article allegedly being written by someone who’s a linguistic prescriptivist. (Have you still even bothered to read up on those to the point that you’d finally understand what the terms mean?)
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So the randomly picked samples from millions of clips that all support my point about how “brand” is used — even in the context of a scene that is even set in the wild west… is just a coincidence?
So you stand behind this comment:
?
Why do you feel the need to specify “first dictionary definition” there? Couldn’t have anything to do with you not understanding that definitions in dictionaries don’t go by order of “most used”, and someone having noted to you before that comment that “printed mark” is also a definition of “brand”?
Clearly you’re not correct there. Not everyone is saying that. You’re demanding that the headline is to be interpreted literally, and only in one single way that you’ve chosen (actually cherry-picked from a list of definitions that are being actively used, as I have demonstrated several times from databases which have millions and millions of entries). Yet you also insist that this literal interpretation can’t be use for the comment in which you demand that the headline is interpreted purely prescriptively.
You see people claiming that “everyone is interpreting it in this way” doesn’t mean that it’s true that they are. You’ve failed to show anyone interpreting it like that. You’ve shown that people upvoted a comment asserting that is happening. That’s like saying you’ve proved the Earth to be Flat because you can point to a comment with upvotes claiming it’s Flat.
See you being too lazy and not spending five minutes to learn what “prescriptive” means that you’ve written these comments all day not realising how ironic it is to anyone with a basic understanding of philology. :D I’ve repeated myself about a dozen times, yet you just won’t believe you can be wrong, so you haven’t even bothered to skim the articles I’ve linked, meaning you continue this ironic garbage. Which I thank you for, because I’m having a rather empty evening otherwise, so repeating this to you until you get it is something very pleasant to do. :)