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Post by Verbivore on Oct 9, 2020 0:36:56 GMT
So who is entitled to “claim” the use of these elevated honorifics? Plumbers? Refuse collectors? School teachers? Social workers? Journalists? Lawyers? Members of Parliament? By what right do medical practitioners without a doctorate or police inspectors without a degree claim the entitlement? I am retired, can I claim to be “Retiree Horner”? Certainly, LJH. You may be referred to as Retiree Horner, but not introduce yourself thus: "My name is Retiree Horner". In my books, that is, but I always did pick nits. ;-)
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 9, 2020 6:02:46 GMT
The “doctor” with only a Bachelor of Surgery degree is certainly a strange arrangement - but it’s traditional and that gives it some sort of acceptance?
Titles don’t have to relate to academic status, though; a police inspector is that by rank, not by a degree. The same applies to military ranks such as Captain, though I dislike it when some long-retired fellow calls himself “Captain Whatever”. He used to be, but isn’t.
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Post by Twoddle on Oct 9, 2020 10:11:04 GMT
Titles don’t have to relate to academic status, though; a police inspector is that by rank, not by a degree. The same applies to military ranks such as Captain, though I dislike it when some long-retired fellow calls himself “Captain Whatever”. He used to be, but isn’t. I can't vouch for the veracity of this, or give the whys and wherefores, but many years ago I was told that military officers above the rank of NCO were entitled to refer to themselves by their ranks after retirement.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 9, 2020 10:16:55 GMT
The “doctor” with only a Bachelor of Surgery degree is certainly a strange arrangement - but it’s traditional and that gives it some sort of acceptance? Titles don’t have to relate to academic status, though; a police inspector is that by rank, not by a degree. The same applies to military ranks such as Captain, though I dislike it when some long-retired fellow calls himself “ Captain Whatever”. He used to be, but isn’t. I get riled each time I see or hear reference to Captain Cook's "discovery" of Australia. He was the captain (lowercase) of the Endeavour when he sailed here but his rank was Lieutenant at the time; his rank of Captain (uppercase) was granted after his visit to these Antipodes. And he didn't "discover" the land anyway; the Dutch and others had been here previously (mainly to the west and north, whereas Cook charted the east), not to mention our Indigenes who'd "discovered" the continent some 60K years before that.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 9, 2020 10:18:42 GMT
I can't vouch for the veracity of this, or give the whys and wherefores, but many years ago I was told that military officers above the rank of NCO were entitled to refer to themselves by their ranks after retirement. Americans, it seems, frequently refer to themselves (or others entitled to military title) as Major-General Blah Blah (ret'd).
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 9, 2020 14:11:32 GMT
I’m not sure where this conversation is going but I still don’t know by what authority police departments give titles to policemen and policewomen nor by what authority universities give the title “professor” to some employees but don’t give the title “lecturer” or “administrative assistant” to other employees, nor do I know why I should be expected to follow their discriminatory practices. Before my retirement, I was employed as manager by a public authority and I have a master’s degree in public sector management but no-one suggested I should be addressed as Manager Horner. I think this is blatant titleism and not in the spirit of equality we have learnt to love. Titleism must be challenged wherever it is encountered. I will start by calling my gardener by his proper title rather than John, an outmoded practice of which I am now very ashamed.
Custom and practice and tradition I hear someone mutter from the back of the room. So, too, were cockfighting and bear baiting at one time — but we have moved on.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 9, 2020 19:39:28 GMT
[…] what authority universities give the title “professor” to some employees but don’t give the title “lecturer” or “ administrative assistant” to other employees […] . During the '90s when I was employed by a university, my job title was, within my department, Senior Information Architect (a wanker of a title for lead desktop publisher of learning and teaching materials), but the administration officially called me an a admin assistant so they could pay me about half the outside industry rate for what I did. In fact all non-academic staff, regardless of their jobs – with the exception of groundskeepers – were classed as admin assistants; that seemed to be the case in all unis across AU. Even though my job morphed into one of teaching others the science of publication design ("information architecture"), I remained an admin assistant on relatively low pay. (There were incremental raises annually for one's first four years, but after that one remained on that pay rate.)
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 9, 2020 21:14:09 GMT
Oh dear, Vv. i was an Admin. Assistant (as my grade, not as my job title) at a university, but luckily the pay grades extended northwards quite well - into the professorial grades. It makes sense, if you consider the Vice-Chancellor as the true Administrator and all other non-academics as assisting that job.
(Administration is all too often confused with clerical work, of course. It pains me to admit that that’s one point on which America has it right, when it refers to “this administration”, where the UK says”this government”.)
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 9, 2020 22:51:28 GMT
Since writing an earlier post about the use of titles, I have been considering the word “honorific” and have noticed the absence in standard English of the letter U in what seems to be the American fashion. I thought that was interesting and have been Googling its etymology. I assume that honour and honorific ultimately derive from the same Latin source but commentaries on the internet slip seamlessly between British and American spellings so it is difficult to be certain. Do honour and honorific come from the same source and, if so, why the spelling variation? I don’t think we can blame Noah Webster as I believe he merely simplified the then usual OU spelling. But I think the U-less “honorific” has always been standard if not universal.
For what it’s worth, honorificabilitudinitatibus mentioned in Love’s Labour’s Lost has no relevant U either.
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 10, 2020 2:44:10 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 10, 2020 8:04:41 GMT
Oh dear, Vv. i was an Admin. Assistant (as my grade, not as my job title) at a university, but luckily the pay grades extended northwards quite well - into the professorial grades. […] Oh if only in Oz. I started that job in 1992 and held it till 2002. My pay (in hourly terms) progressed over four grades from $19 to $29. The lowest grade of tutor / lecturer started at $39, progressing to seniors (professors etc.) at $80+. As I was never reclassified for my (part-time) instructional work, I was still paid as an AA. Never mind: I did enjoy the work and the environment (until campus politricks intervened and soured it somewhat).
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Post by Twoddle on Oct 10, 2020 10:10:23 GMT
On the subject of the use of military titles after retirement, as a keen "armchair" genealogist I've noticed that the cemetery headstones of Americans who were drafted for military service often detail such service, e.g. "John Smith. Private/Sergeant, Such and Such Corps, World War 2/Korea/Vietnam", although they died decades later of natural causes. Most UK veterans who were conscripted for active service seemed only too keen to forget it, rarely talked about it, and certainly wouldn't mention it on their graves. A cultural thing, perhaps?
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 10, 2020 13:15:29 GMT
I think so, Twod. We often hear in American TV, or films, of someone being "a veteran", which we are to take means that they were in (fought in?) some military role.
In Britain, it's more likely to be taken to mean simply that they are very old.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 11, 2020 8:26:42 GMT
Oh damn! Perhaps I need to stop reading the newspaper that I formerly copyedited!
In its entertainment section last week a local music-festival impresario was complaining about this year's festival's cancellation owing to COVID-19. He wrote – completely missed by my replacement "proofie" – that 2020 had been an anus horribilus (rather than aNNus horribilIs). I wrote to the paper (and cced to the festival man) that I was sorry to learn of the chap's haemorrhoid problem and hoped that he, and the paper's proofreader, would quickly improve.
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 11, 2020 9:39:01 GMT
I recall the photocopier contract at work telling us that we were entitled to two regular service visits per anum. I decided not to be involved.
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