Troops humiliate Palestinians swept up in West Bank raid by referring to them only by their numbers instead of by name

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.”

Everyone in the comments are assuming the literal and first dictionary definition of branding by physical mutilation.

Why do you keep insisting this childish bullshit that no-one has argued for?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brand

a(1)

: a mark made by burning with a hot iron to attest manufacture or quality or to designate ownership

(2)

: a PRINTED mark made for similar purposes

b(1)

: a mark put on criminals

removed by mod

In colloquial English the term “branded” is almost never referred to the second point in the Webster dictionary

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&section=

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

No one uses “brand” colloquially for printed form. I suspect you know this.

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.)

@TheFonz@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
0
edit-2
1M

removed by mod

You keep deferring whenever your childish garbage is shown to be moronic.

This in such a weird hill to die on.

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.

removed by mod

@Dasus@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
0
edit-2
1M

No one here is talking about linguistic purity dumbass.

Everyone in the comments are assuming the literal and first dictionary definition of branding by physical mutilation.

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.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=branded%2C+branding&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3

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.

@TheFonz@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
1
edit-2
1M

removed by mod

Of course not literally everyone is taking that interpretation.

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.

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.

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?

Listen pal, I grew up speaking English.

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.)

no need to bring up journalistic integrity

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”.)

Everyone in the comments are assuming the literal and first dictionary definition of branding by physical mutilation.

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.

Create a post

Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.

Rules (Subject to Change)

–Be a Decent Human Being

–Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title

–If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article

–If a video’s content isn’t clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it’s about.

–Posts must have something to do with the topic

–Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.

–No NSFW content

–Abide by the rules of lemmy.world

  • 1 user online
  • 23 users / day
  • 46 users / week
  • 347 users / month
  • 1.29K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 691 Posts
  • 6.47K Comments
  • Modlog