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.”
Oh fuck right off. It has a way stronger connotation in colloquial English to be any other definition except an actual burning hot iron.
IF we were having this conversation 150 years ago, it would be different.
We’re not.
https://www.playphrase.me/#/search?q=Branded
What sort of a percentage of those is referring to an actual brand and isn’t from a piece of media depicting something before 1900’s?
How about here?
https://edition.cnn.com/search?q=Branded&from=0&size=10&page=1&sort=relevance&types=article§ion=
Here?
https://apnews.com/article/wawa-tumbler-recall-metal-straw-injuries-0225d1ec580c880d3f1aef199e6580ca
https://apnews.com/search?q="branded"&s=0
https://apnews.com/search?q="branded+people"&s=0
Searching for “branded people” and the first story to come up is
Not a native speaker, are ya?
Not to mention which, you still haven’t addressed the fact that demanding such linguistic prescription is wrong in general, not to mention in journalistic practice where standards are different.
See you’re trying to challenge linguistics when you have an understanding that’s probably from your lessons at whatever public school, because the teachers at those tend to be extremely prescriptive. Something which modern linguistics definitely wouldn’t agree with to that extent at least, and definitely not in the context of headlines, and definitely not in the context of this specific word, which actually has this definition as well.
(Also, you’re avoiding admitting Israel is committing crimes against humanity. Probably because you’re a filtht little genocide denier.)
You keep bringing up the branding of objects or products as a counter to the branding implied when humans are the subject. In the AAP article you linked it is referring to product branding.
I know for sure English is not your language now.
Almost everyone in this thread that did not read the article took the physical scarification implication of the headline.
This in such a weird hill to die on. Unless you are the author of the article it’s odd how much effort you are putting into discussing the semantics of branding when it comes to humans. Right now the IDF is committing genocide and there are so many more horrendous acts being neported in actual news sources to refer to but here we are super concerned with explaining how the word “branded” akshuallly really means printed text haha no really gotcha (in every colloquial context - not news articles discussing products! - in the English language when the physical branding of humans is mentioned it is universally taken as physical scarification; Not drawing with a sharpie).
Like, why?
Edit: just reread your comment and just caught the labels. Holy shit,
“filthy little genocide denier”
How sad that even after people mention they agree that Israel is committing heinous acts (I’ve stated as much numerous times) you can’t help yourself. We are all in agreement here that Israel is committing genocide but I want nothing to do with you. You are incapable of discussing anything that disagrees on the slightest fact because your feelings are unable to handle any criticism. I recommend you stick to some safe bubble or echo chamber from now on.
You keep deferring whenever your childish garbage is shown to be moronic.
Isn’t it just? Had you actually read the article I linked in the first place, your asinine ego wouldn’t be in your way to admit how wrong you are. But you’re not interested in actual linguistics. You don’t care about it and you’re not versed in it, which is apparent from you pushing views that high-schoolers might have, because you’ve just never read anything about linguistics beyond your lessons on that level. I’ve said it several times. Applying such a prescriptive criteria to journalistic headlines is beyond inane. Literally a 12-year old in my country would be expected to understand what I’ve been repeating to you several times now. So you’ve definitely not stepped a foot anywhere near a university anytime in your life.
You’re stomping your foot, crying “NO, ‘BRAND’ ONLY HAS ONE SINGLE MEANING. ONE SINGLE ONE. THAT’S HOW LANGUAGE WORKS. WAA-WAA!”*.
You desperately need your exaggerated bullshit to be right, but since you’ve exaggerated and generalised, it’s obviously not, which makes you ashamed, which makes you even more convicted to die on this hill on that you don’t understand the first thing about.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description
https://spcollege.libguides.com/c.php?g=254319&p=1695321
https://newslit.org/educators/resources/seven-standards-quality-journalism/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378216608002798
Cry all you want, but the journalist has done nothing wrong, and unlike you claim, people in this thread definitely aren’t assuming “physical mutilation” when they read “brand”. You can cry and cry and cry all day, it won’t make your sixth grade approach to philology any better, kiddo. :D
I recommend you stick to some safe bubble or echo chamber from now on.
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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?