Word: idioms
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...precisely in everyday life by the conduct of persons who are not psychologically ill nor considered to be so." Life in mental hospitals-"storage dumps" is one of his kindlier descriptions-also has its rituals. The patient who throws feces at an attendant, Goffman argues, is using a ceremonial idiom "that is as exquisite in its way as a bow from the waist. Whether he knows it or not, the patient speaks the same ritual language as his captors; he merely says what they do not wish to hear...
...later years, Bach gradually turned away from church composition and developed an even more austere and adventurous secular idiom, seemingly for his own satisfaction. He had always been a teacher, first to his children and then to paying pupils. He was one of the first keyboard instructors to introduce the use of the thumb and to advocate playing with curved rather than straight fingers. He told his composition students that contrapuntal lines should be like people in a conversation-each speaking grammatically, completing his sentences and remaining silent when he had nothing to add. Now, in the compositions...
...will lose its appeal a few ages hence. Certainly life will continue to become even more complex and our minds will want to identify that this is happening to us. But will people drift out of the particular absurdities they now languish in and start speaking in a new idiom different from the one Vonnegut's characters used to speak? And would such an occurrence make the then readers unable to recognize the truth in the writing and hence not laugh? Well, fundamentally I believe that it is the cliches that will never change, that, as our society mechanizes itself...
...note of exhortation: the writing style, high socrelese, is not impenetrable. On the contrary, should one absorb the idiom it can be remarkably effective. It is worth the effort...
...whose star has been rising ever since his epochal Air Power brought home the Caligulan glory of the air force to the musically thirsty, seems to have made little musical progress since that Curtis Lemay extravaganza. His To St. Cecilia was an exciting grotesque written in his consummately banal idiom featuring vapid stentorian outbursts for a brass ensemble and Victory at Sea-type arching melodies for the hapless chorus. This clangorous work, sounding like Hollywood with the rough edges knocked of, brilliantly captured a certain Pliestoceme ambience which would have been beyond the grasp of a lesser composer. The character...