Phrases/words that set your teeth on edge.

[MrGongGong]

"expat"

the word is "immigrant" FFS

[LeMartinPecheur]

"expat"

the word is "immigrant" FFS

Sorry MrGG, an expat is 'one of us' living outside the UK. So an immigrant from the perspective of over there, but not from here. An emigrant perhaps, but it's not a word we use much, is it?

[MrGongGong]

Sorry MrGG, an expat is 'one of us' living outside the UK. So an immigrant from the perspective of over there, but not from here. An emigrant perhaps, but it's not a word we use much, is it?

You are, obviously, correct.
It's the pejorative assumptions in one and not the other that I find objectionable.

[Nick Armstrong]

"We seem to have problems with the line".

...

This happens nearly every day - rarely used to. Progress now means they can get photos back from Pluto but the technology can't manage a straightforward call from Leeds or wherever to London.

This now occurs about three or four times a day on average, I reckon ...

I'm afraid the days of anyone outside the BBC believing that the once justly admired organisation stands for excellence and professionalism are long gone.

...

As for the rest ...

There was a catalogue of ineptitude this afternoon on In Tune which unusually I caught while on the move... (talking of 'catching', Ms Klein has a nasty dose of chronic Raffertitis these days - the verbose gushing had me gagging) - but the programme was supposed to end with an interview with Karen Cargill. No sign of Ms Cargill - and SK took the step of issuing a Crimewatch-type appeal, that if she happened to be listening to the radio, could she get to a phone...

Then, after a previous guest had been hauled back in the studio to play another piece, suddenly Ms Cargill appeared on the airwaves having apparently been 'waiting patiently'.... only to disappear mid-sentence with an electronic beep, leaving SK flailing and apologising again.

The summer intern excelled him (or her) self...

[cloughie]

Sorry MrGG, an expat is 'one of us' living outside the UK. So an immigrant from the perspective of over there, but not from here. An emigrant perhaps, but it's not a word we use much, is it?

Or down here it's Cousin Jacks for one and incomers for the other.

[teamsaint]

Stellar.
As used on In Tune endlessly, it seems.

[Serial_Apologist]

Stellar.
As used on In Tune endlessly, it seems.

Serves them right if they drink that stuff...

How about "discriminAtory"? I've always pronounced it "discrIminatory"

[burning dog]

Serves them right if they drink that stuff...

How about "discriminAtory"? I've always pronounced it "discrIminatory"

Haven't you ever wanted to discrimin a Tory?

[Serial_Apologist]

Haven't you ever wanted to discrimin a Tory?

[Stanfordian]

The phrase 'not at all'. I cannot remember the last time that I heard this in my everyday business. It's used frequently in the BBC Radio series The Archers. It drives me mad!

[doversoul1]

Musicking

Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms ""musicking,"" a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower
[…]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Musicking-Meanings-Performing-Listening-Culture/dp/0819522570

Has anyone ever said that music is a thing? And if ‘musicking’ is a verb, is Mr Small musickinging while he has a shower and he musickinged when he was in the shower?

I guess by ‘music is not a thing,’ the author meant to mean that the word ‘music’ does not mean just one thing, i.e. composing, performing etc.. But again, has anyone ever said that it is? I also guess that the author meant to mean that ‘when we talk about music, we are not talking about just one thing…’ but again, has anyone said that?

I suppose it’s much the same thing as ‘do’. I do the dishes and you do the children’; it encompasses all domestic chores.

I wonder how long it will be before we hear it on Radio 3.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"Musicking"? Not for me.


I'll be too busy Arting.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No - I said "Arting"!

[teamsaint]

No - I said "Arting"!

What about the people at Sidmouth ?

[Serial_Apologist]

Musicking

Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms ""musicking,"" a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower
[…]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Musicking-Meanings-Performing-Listening-Culture/dp/0819522570

Has anyone ever said that music is a thing? And if ‘musicking’ is a verb, is Mr Small musickinging while he has a shower and he musickinged when he was in the shower?

I guess by ‘music is not a thing,’ the author meant to mean that the word ‘music’ does not mean just one thing, i.e. composing, performing etc.. But again, has anyone ever said that it is? I also guess that the author meant to mean that ‘when we talk about music, we are not talking about just one thing…’ but again, has anyone said that?

I suppose it’s much the same thing as ‘do’. I do the dishes and you do the children’; it encompasses all domestic chores.

I wonder how long it will be before we hear it on Radio 3.

I'm familiar with this word from reading Small's excellent 1977 book "Music - Society - Education", though I think John Cage may have also used it in his 1961 book "Silence". Unfortunately the word isn't listed in the former's index, and a cursory flip though hasn't revealed where Small defines it. I think his point is to define anything as consisting in activity as opposed to in entities, music being a good exemplification of change through processes belonging to means of expressive communication that are not "bugged" by such linguistic conventions as subject and object, noun and verb set in antagonism such as (for example) interpret agency as separate from agent. By extension, music as activity, as opposed to frozen existent, has been lost sight of, especially since primacy has been accorded from on high upon the written score as objective reality, to be realised in observance with the composer's inferred intentions, otherwise it is not music in the sense originally envisaged by the composer - which in this elevated view of music as permanently inscribed on score paper the way the words of scribes are held in veneration over how they are interpreted. Mr Gong Gong can probably clarify this better than me, or put me right on this, but I what I understand Small to be objecting to is the way in which copyright and broader issues of ownership whichr result from the historic primacy accorded to written music individualise the musician's relationship to both the score and his or her fellow musicians.

In all this, Small's bone of contention is the conductor acting as conduit to some "truth" residing in the score in a situation in which all participants, audience included, are abstracted from the circumstances in which the "standard" repertoire dominating most concert programmes was first created, thereby leading to its mininterpretation, not to mention epochs long pre-dating this, let alone lnon-Western musical cultures left outside consideration, and the way in which this process, which has been allowed to evolve into what we now call "the music business", banishes the rich and multifarious ways in which music, musical expression and creation, once upon a time served to benchmark and celebrate human collective endeavour in the most "spiritual" ways possible as understood in certain "eastern" practices, involving each according to his or her means.

It is the latter that Small would seek to have restored to music making, or musicking.