The French Academie tried to do so, especially to resist ;franglais' but it was
a losing battle.
The Cal. legislation is designed to control suspect operators - to attempt to
regulate an industry.
We have similar regulation and certification but it's a form of surrender.
There were better terms available..
Natural is a nonsense - cyanide is natural, some quite nasty pesticides and
herbicides contain naturally occurring substances and some 'organically
approved' fertilisers such as composts and treated excrements contain very
toxic materials indeed;
One of my favourites is the story of the shampoo that had 'sea weed' extract -
it sounded positive/natural in the style of aloe vera and so on. In fact, the
extract was merely agar agar, used to thicken it to make it seem richer and
better value. Some ad agency flack must have spotted it in the list of
ingredients, asked what it was and then put spin on it. It's not toxic but it
has no particular benefit for hair. It's like adding flour and claiming 'with
natural wheat extract'.
I had a whole generation of students who thought that Macca's was a restaurant
- a creeping concept capturing the clueless.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.soultheft.com
Author/Publisher: The SLR Compendium - http://www.blurb.com/books/3732813
On 21/01/2013, at 11:23 AM, Moose wrote:
> On 1/19/2013 1:59 PM, Andrew Fildes wrote:
>> No, it has been assigned an inaccurate meaning by a group using a term seen
>> to be positive to promote an agenda.
>
> Here's a question for you. Is it possible to legislate meaning of words?
> Calif. passed legislation some years ago that
> defines what the word "Organic" means on food labels. Producers must pass
> inspections/tests in order to be able to use
> it. Several other states have followed suit, generally, I believe, following
> the CA one, so products produced in one
> state may be sold in others.
>
> One outcome is that many products, some actually food, have gone to use of
> the unregulated term, "natural" to say that
> their products come from nature, without the use/addition of industrially
> produced chemicals, or some such description.
> The folks making and using these products are pretty loose in their use of
> the term "chemical".
>
>> It's like Macdonalds referring to their establishments as 'restaurants'.
>> Like hell they are.
>> If the furniture is bolted down and you can hose it out, it's not a
>> restaurant.
>
> That's a pure curmudgeon complaint. I just don't see the point of such a
> distinction. I've never eaten* McD's food, and
> have never had any trouble distinguishing it from purveyors of palatable
> food, just because it may be called a restaurant.
>
>> There's an erosion of meaning going on.
>
> Here, I'm torn between your stance of "erosion" and Mike's substitution of
> "evolution". Language does need to evolve,
> and making up new words seems not to be a natural process. As the evolution
> of the need for a new term/meaning develops
> gradually, it seems natural that people would start using a close seeming
> existing word. That seems to be how English
> has acquired many terms from other languages.
>
> And in the case at hand, I'm not sure any significant problems of
> usage/meaning are actually occurring. How many people
> using 'organic' in the now common was about food actually have any need to
> know the different meaning to a chemist? Do
> you imagine any chemists are confused by the use in food labeling?
>
> As long as nobody is hurt, I'm happy to accept the change as evolution.
>
> The word we lost that I miss is 'discrimination'. This was a really useful
> word for talking about the ability to discern
> differences. The addition of the assumption of both value judgements and
> actions based on those judgments into the word
> have left us the poorer in language.
>
> Discernment doesn't have quite the same meaning, and "Capable of making find
> distinctions, but without necessarily
> assigning moral/meaning values to them, and certainly without acting based on
> them, without further words specifying
> so." is a bit awkward**.
>
> On 20/01/2013, at 5:53 AM, Mike Lazzari wrote:
>>> The word "organic" has different meanings in different context. Not
>>> unlike many words in English. Straighten out your panties folks.
>
> Just so.
>
> Naturally Organic Moose
>
> * A careful distinction. I had children. They watched TV ads and had
> playmates. McD's had Happy Meals. I am not a
> tyrant, nor am I an absolutist. Thus, I purchased quite a few Happy Meals,
> and other such stuff. Never ate any, although
> I had a close call. One son, knowing I like dill pickles, offered the small,
> carefully centered one from his hamburger
> to me. I almost got it to my mouth before realizing the potential error of my
> ways. :-) ;-)
>
> ** One of those wonderful words that looks and sounds like its meaning. "...
> wkw ...", wow!
>
> --
> What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
> --
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