Does This Construction Seem Derogatory to Anyone Else?
Here’s an example of something I’ve been seeing a lot lately. A book or a blog post or whatever will refer to a perhaps lesser-known author/filmmaker/musician/book/film, etc., with the construction: “a Japanese film of 1966 called Godzilla vs. Monster Zero.” That happens to be the one I’m looking at right now, but I’ve also seen ones like “a 19th century British novelist named Elizabeth Gaskell.” Typically, the assumption when writers use this seems to me to be that the thing they’re about to mention won’t be known to most of their audience. For example, in the book with the Godzilla example, four lines later, the writer mentions “Beethoven sonatas” but doesn’t feel the need to say “sonatas by a German composer named Ludwig van Beethoven.” Apparently because everyone should know who Beethoven is. And I agree that Beethoven is, and should be, better known than the Godzilla movie. But I would still say “the 1966 Japanese film Godzilla vs. Monster Zero” instead. To me, that contains all the same information with less condescension. It gives the object a more concrete existence by virtue of a definite rather than an indefinite one as well as by firmly connecting it to its name (it is Godzilla vs. Monster Zero rather than just being called that).
Do those two ways of phrasing the same thing have connotatively different meanings to anyone but me? Or am I just being overly bothered by something meaningless?
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May 8th, 2008 09:54
Seems to be a dramatic, rhetorical, or perhaps simply rhythmic device. Or it could be structured thusly to place the most relevant information at the end of the sentence, keep that semantic and contextual tie to the next sentence. The Godzilla vs. Monster Zero sentence is supposed to introduce and explain what the title pertains to, but structured in this way, the title is placed in such a position to carry on — like a baton in a relay — into the next sentence.
I don’t necessarily see it as condescending — a bit pretentious, perhaps, but not even necessarily that. I do agree, though, that “the 1966 Japanese film Godzilla vs. Monster Zero” is a much better construction with the dramatic/contextual structure intact; “a Japanese film of 1966″ is…awkward at best. I think a more…vociferous defender of the language would simply call it wrong.