Employee fired for use of the word Homophone

K

Kittamaru

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums.
Valued Senior Member
http://www.bustle.com/articles/3401...&utm_medium=fijifrost&utm_campaign=CMfacebook

Here is the latest in American horror stories: in an ironic and totally ludicrous turn of events, Tim Torkildson, a social-media specialist for a private Provo-based English language learning center, was fired after a misunderstanding when his boss failed to comprehend the difference between “homophones” and “homosexuality.”

Torkildson wrote a blog on the school’s website explaining homophones — words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and mean different things (allowed vs. aloud, their vs. there, eight vs. ate.) He was immediately called into the office of his boss, Clarke Woodger, who expressed frustration that the school was now going to be “associated with homosexuality.” Sounds like Woodger is caught up in his own little mess of homophonia.

Aside from the revolting notion that an employee could be fired for promoting a gay agenda, it is outrageous that Torkildson was not given a proper chance to explain himself… and that the head of a language institute doesn’t know what a homophone is. This case is a reminder to all of us that closed-minded lunatics still plague the educational institutions in this country.

Let us all pray for the future of this language learning center, whose president clearly has a lot of learning to do himself.
Click to expand...

Fraggle Rocker... I don't understand how you put up with it man. I'm not expert on the English language, and this makes me want to beat my head against a wall until everything fades to black...

Another article:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/58236366-90/says-english-homophones-language.html.csp
Paul Rolly: Blogger fired from language school over ‘homophonia’
By PAUL ROLLY | The Salt Lake Tribune
First Published Jul 29 2014 08:44 pm • Last Updated Jul 29 2014 09:32 pm
Homophones, as any English grammarian can tell you, are words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings — such as be and bee, through and threw, which and witch, their and there.

This concept is taught early on to foreign students learning English because it can be confusing to someone whose native language does not have that feature.

But when the social-media specialist for a private Provo-based English language learning center wrote a blog explaining homophones, he was let go for creating the perception that the school promoted a gay agenda.

Tim Torkildson says after he wrote the blog on the website of his employer, Nomen Global Language Center, his boss and Nomen owner Clarke Woodger, called him into his office and told him he was fired.

As Torkildson tells it, Woodger said he could not trust him and that the blog about homophones was the last straw.

"Now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality," Woodger complained, according to Torkildson, who posted the exchange on his Facebook page.

Torkildson says he was careful to write a straightforward explanation of homophones. He knew the "homo" part of the word could be politically charged, but he thought the explanation of that quirky part of the English language would be educational.

Nomen has removed that blog from its website, but a similar explanation of homophones was posted there in 2011 with apparently no controversy.

Woodger says his reaction to Torkildson’s blog has nothing to do with homosexuality but that Torkildson had caused him concern because he would "go off on tangents" in his blogs that would be confusing and sometimes could be considered offensive.

Nomen is Utah’s largest private English as a Second Language school and caters mostly to foreign students seeking admission to U.S. colleges and universities. Woodger says his school has taught 6,500 students from 58 countries during the past 15 years. Most of them, he says, are at basic levels of English and are not ready for the more complicated concepts such as homophones.
Click to expand...
 
niggardly

I was advised to delete that word from my vocabulary...
And, Things did not improve when I replied "Ain't no fucking way in hell that I'm gonna shrink my vocabulary for some idiotic p.c. bullshit!"

Insanity runs deep in the P.C. world.
 
"Idiots" is a word that is becoming more and more useful, as in, "Why don't you idiots know what 'homophone' and 'niggard' mean?"

But then you can't call the idiots idiots either.
 
Kittamaru said:
Fraggle Rocker... I don't understand how you put up with it man. I'm not expert on the English language, and this makes me want to beat my head against a wall until everything fades to black...
Click to expand...
This is Utah, the home state of America's Morons.

Oh wait, should that be spelled "Mormons"? Even other Christians look down their noses at the Mormons.

Captain Kremmen said:
"People at this level of English," Woodger told the Tribune, "may see the 'homo' side and think it has something to do with gay sex."
Click to expand...
I wonder if they avoid homogenized milk?

When I was a kid in the 1950s, the cartons were labeled HOMO MILK.

Aqueous Id said:
An English language school?
Click to expand...
It's for immigrants. The Mormons place a high priority on making converts, and their children are sent abroad to bring their religion to foreigners. Some of the converts decide to emigrate to the USA, and sponsorship by the church makes it easier to do.

Mitt Romney did his "mission" in France. That was very difficult. As soon as the French learned that Mormons are not allowed to drink alcohol, all the doors were slammed in his face.
 
Liberalism has a history of commandeering language to confuse traditional meaning. The reaction to the employee was connected to an anticipation of the commandeer game and how it impacts people.

The Christmas song, Deck the Halls has the line, "don we now our gay apparel", which meant festive or party clothes. But now if you say gay apparel the first thing that comes to mind is homosexual males in drag. The affordable care act costs more, therefore affordable now means more expensive in terms of hard data. The trick is to assume not everyone is current with the liberal jargon game, with many stilling thinking affordable means affordable and not unaffordable. They line up to be sheared not knowing the game.

There is war against women and a war against poverty. But fighting ISIS is not a war, even though they have tanks and cannons and kill people. War has been commandeered such that males not using tanks and cannon against the women in now a war. But you can't call the fight against ISIS a war, because then the old reality of war kicks in, and the words game connected to the war on women looks like a lie that the women want to hear to feel good about themselves; thin in that dress.

The homogenized milk was also called homo milk. This was originally understood as meaning milk agitated to uniformity. But the commandeer of language scams has successfully programmed the brain to think in the gutter; slur. One is almost afraid to say the correct term, like homo milk, out of fear the PC police will assume this is their commandeered territory, and shoot on sight.

I can see the need by some to nip the scam in the bud before it takes root. We don't need the PC police to gain more territory because they are very intolerant of old timers walking in the territory they commandeered from them.
 
Linguistics is the scientific[1] study of language.[2] There are broadly three aspects to the study, which include language form, language meaning, and language in context.[3] The earliest known activities in the description of language have been attributed to Pāṇini around 500 BCE, with his analysis of Sanskrit in Ashtadhyayi.[4]

Linguistics analyzes human language as a system for relating sounds (or signed gestures) and meaning.[5] Phonetics studies acoustic and articulatory properties of the production and perception of speech sounds and non-speech sounds. The study of language meaning, on the other hand, deals with how languages encode relations between entites, properties, and other aspects of the world to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as to manage and resolve ambiguity. While the study of semantics typically is concerned with truth conditions, pragmatics deals with how meanings are influenced by context.[6]

Grammar is the system of rules which governs the form of the utterances in a given language. It encompasses both sound and meaning, and includes phonology (how sounds function and pattern together), morphology (the formation and composition of words), and syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences from these words).[7]
Click to expand...

The employee being fired should bring up a discussion of how the commandeering of language, can impact and influence meaning and how not everyone is aware their language has been invaded, thereby creating confusion of meaning.

Hate speech does not even require hate in your heart, when it is spoken. It only requires hate or perception of hate in the heart of the PC police. If you make a joke with a light heart, this is hate speech, unless hate now also means light hearted. To keep up with this linguistics scam, you need to constantly revise old meaning, until poison now means medicine.

How does the commandeering of language lower clarity of thought when it adds ambiguity?

If you believe in cultural diversity (literally), then old timers who used taboo words of today, should be allowed to practice these old meanings of words, as part of their cultural age identity. How can you have diversity while forcing conformity to meanings? One can speak any language but meaning is forced conformed to the will of the liberal commandeer.

Hate speech should only apply to liberals, since this is part of their linguistic identity of diversity. One should be able to use another meaning in the dictionary in that is It may be useful to unravel the game, unless inquiring now means trying to hurt others, so nobody who loves their neighbor will want to inquire? This is new territory for linguistics research.
 
wellwisher said:
Hate speech does not even require hate in your heart, when it is spoken. It only requires hate or perception of hate in the heart of the PC police. If you make a joke with a light heart, this is hate speech, unless hate now also means light hearted. To keep up with this linguistics scam, you need to constantly revise old meaning, until poison now means medicine.
Click to expand...

I see. So if you make a joke out of how worthless a person is because of their race that is fine. So for you a smiling racist is not a racist at all? Great....
 
By your definition, connected to the subjectivity of the PC police, it is racist to be a comedian if certain buzz words appear, even if you enjoy making people laugh and mean no harm. Hate is not hate in the imaginary world of commandeering. The PC police commandeer the words and then hype the emotional induction for the Pavlov response. Say we start with the word rock. This is not too trilling. To alter how people to react to this word, when I say rock, I say it with pride and excitement. The rock is not just a rock, by it is also a Pavlov food pellet, to get people hyped with pride and excitement. The PC police use this method of commandeering with the liberal base easy to control.

Many people were sensitive to the term gay marriage, as much as the n-word to others. This should have been hate speech based on the defensive reaction the term was generating. The reason this was not called speech is the PC commandeered and distorted this traditional term. The PC police did not to stand up for the feelings of the victim of this scam, but only the feelings of the invader they helped to boost. The invader is the victim because in the world of PC up is down and down can be up.

If we go back to the original topic, the liberal commandeering of language is making it hard to use normal language, because people have to look over their shoulder less the PC police define over react to what ever you do. I would like to commandeer the phrase, "dumb ass", to mean anyone connected to the PC busy body movement. I am not saying these people are dumb asses in the derogatory sense. Rather, I am only using that new definition because I like the way it sounds with it having a positive meaning. But if others mistake this term, as meaning the original derogatory definition, that is not my intent.

It would be good discussion to discuss the linguistics of commandeering language games.
 
... that's great... except homo- isn't a word... it's a prefix.

Same idea in the end, though, I guess...
 
homocarpous
homocategoric
homocentric
homocercal
homocercy
homochromatic
homochromous
homodemic
homodermic
homodermy
homodont

(and it goes on like this for about 2 pages in the unabridged dictionary)

Oh my god-----------does that make webster's unabridged a gathering place for homosexuals?
Does it give you strong desires to copulate with one of your own sex?

Leave us not to forget homosapiens

eeeeeeeeekkkkkkkk, we must all be gay!
 
wellwisher said:
There is war against women and a war against poverty.
Click to expand...
But everyone knows that this is a metaphorical use of the word "war." When LBJ launched the War on Poverty, we all knew what he meant.

But fighting ISIS is not a war, even though they have tanks and cannons and kill people.
Click to expand...
This is a legal issue. The Constitution prohibits the president from going to war unless Congress has made a formal declaration of war. Only after an illegal war has been going on for years, do we finally admit that it is a war and begin using the word. In fact we often don't do that until it's over.

sculptor said:
Is that with a soft or a hard G?
Click to expand...
Like many surnames, woodger was originally an occupation: a woodcutter. There are several people named Woodger in Wikipedia, but it doesn't give the pronunciation.

I wouldn't be surprised if people go both ways, like "Beauchamp" pronounced both boh-SHOM and BEE-chum.

Remember when gay used to mean happy?
Click to expand...
It was used more for "jolly," "merry" or "lively" events or moods, and also for "bright" colors. Like many words, we picked it up from Old French during the Norman occupation of England. In modern French gai does indeed mean "happy."

wellwisher said:
Hate speech should only apply to liberals . . . .
Click to expand...
Huh??? It's the conservatives who love to call people "niggers," "faggots" and "ragheads."

sculptor said:
Leave us not to forget homosapiens.
Click to expand...
It's two words and since it is Modern Latin it's always written in italics: Homo sapiens. Taxonomic standards require the genus to be capitalized but not the species.

We've gotten so used to Greek homo- used as a prefix meaning "same," that we overlook the fact that homo without the hyphen is a Latin noun meaning "man." Homo sapiens, our species's scientific name, means "Man the wise."

Homo is the source of Spanish hombre, French homme, Italian uomo, Catalan home, Portuguese homem, etc.

We also have a few Latin phrases that contain the word (in various inflections), such as ad hominem, an attack directed "at the man," rather than at his ideas.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top