After DuPont bans Teflon from WordNet, the world is their non-sticky oyster
Toma Tasovac reports on DuPont banning the term Teflon from WordNet, but not before observing:
I lived in the United States for more than a decade — long enough to know that litigation is not just a judiciary battle about enforcing legal rights: it’s a way of life. I have also over the years watched with amusement how dictionaries get used in American courtrooms, from Martha Nussbaum’s unfortunate reading of the Liddell-Scott on τόλμημα in Romer vs. Evans in 1993 to a recent case in which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. parsed the meaning of a federal law by consulting no less than five dictionaries: one of the words he focused on was the preposition of. While Martha Nussbaum’s court drama about moral philosophy, scholarly integrity, homosexual desire and the nature of shame would make a great movie (staring, inevitably, as pretty much every other movie out there – Meryl Streep), Chief Justice Roberts’ dreadful, ho-hum lexicographic exercise would barely pass the Judge Judy test of how-low-can-we-go: he discovered that the meaning of of had something to do with belonging or possession. Pass the remote, please!
Who rules/owns our vocabularies?
There are serious issues at stake but take a few minutes to enjoy this post.