As a writer or just a human, you learn early on the same word or phrase varies in meaning based on where and when you are. The when becomes more important than the where over time.
Back when Morten Downy Jr. used to have a chain smoking talk show famous for him swatting people with a newspaper, then getting sued, he went into a lengthy oratory about how he got fired or censored or something because he said the word “Chinaman” on a broadcast. He dug out the dictionary which he had used most of his career and read the definition
A person, usually male, from China.
Or something along those lines. Between the time his dictionary was printed and the time of the broadcast the definition had been allowed to change.
Offensive. a term used to refer to a Chinese person or a person of Chinese descent.
Which will befuddle a great many people who know that Irish people are proud to call themselves an Irishman and the same generally applies to an Englishman. But none of us lived at a time the upper one percent of America were slaughtering Chinese laborers after the found out the Irish really would fight back if you tried to enslave them. If you thought “The Fighting Irish” was just a sports team logo, you haven’t read much history. For centuries Ireland had three primary exports: Nuns, Priests and Soldiers. It’s not a slur, it’s a heritage.
Location takes on great importance as well. This is one of the many reasons writers are always harped on to “set the scene.” In America a rubber is a thing used for birth control but in the UK it means a pencil eraser. Standing on the deck of a ship in the ocean, whether you are English or American, when a storm is coming up it refers to a rain slicker because they were made of rubber for a long period of time. While I may be of Irish decent, I could not tell you what it means in Ireland.
Setting the scene so words take on the correct meaning is viciously difficult. Oh, you can write as well as you want and have all the editors you want edit the work, but, in the end, the reader will always try to “put the story in their world.” You’ve all done it. No matter how people talk about “being transported into another world” by a story, few really go there for the duration of the work. Most try to fit the work into the world they know. The faces of the characters become the faces of people they know, so do their voices.
One of the things I’m faulted for as a writer, particularly in “Infinite Exposure” is lightly framing my characters. Oh, I delve into their motivations, thoughts and deeds, but, what they actually look like is only discussed when the image of the character is important. Some readers will thank you for and fall in love with the work because of it, others, mostly those who issue some false claim to writing knowledge, will diss you. Put on your padded, asbestos lined Kevlar undies and write what you like to read.
If you want to really see how the meaning of a word changed you should dig up George Carlin’s routine about the infamous f-bomb. It’s hilarious because the original definition of the f-bomb was
to tap lightly with a stick
I kid you not.
Now we can talk about The Gator Soup proximity. If you are in a typical northern restaurant and utter the phrase “gator soup” you will most likely be met by quizzical looks or outright blank stares. If you are in certain, more southerly restaurants when you say “gator soup” you will most likely hear “very good sir” as the waiter leaves to fetch it. What may shock many of you is that in some southerly restaurants the servers response will be “which kind would you prefer?” If you think I’m making that up walk down the soup isle in your local supermarket and count up how many kinds of chicken soup there are. Even clam chowder has multiple varieties.
Oh, I didn’t cheat you, we aren’t done with gator soup.
Certain unsavory individuals have a completely different meaning for gator soup. It is how they dispose of those who’ve wronged them. To avoid law enforcement investigation they get someone to a passed out state on alcohol or some recreational substance, then take them deep into the swamp where gators are thick and roll them out of the boat. Sometimes they will even leave the person’s boat there so it really does look like they got stoned and fell over in case any part of the body is found.
This conversation now brings to mind the “X-FILES: Our Town” episode where the town consisted of cannibals which raised chickens by feeding dead chickens processed into feed to the chickens.
Can’t make the leap?
Let your writer’s mind watch the episode then contemplate gators which eat humans eating the humans who ate the gators who ate the humans . . .
Stopped by just to say hi, and ended up reading several. Great work as always.
Ollie