Talk:Polemic

Definition

Are polemics always meant to "stir up trouble" (or even aggressive, as wiktionary claims)? The English word may differ from the Dutch word 'polemiek', but that has a much more neutral meaning, just arguing (in writing). Then again, it seems to derive from the Greek word 'polemos', meaning 'war', which does sound rather aggressive :) . Maybe in Dutch the meaning of the word has changed over time, but I know it mostly as scientific or philosophical arguing and science and especially philosophy couldn't exist without arguing. So it's just 'daily routine'. DirkvdM 19:08, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

bad examples

the two examples are bad

The forensice medical one appears to lack any "actuality" .. its hypothetical that someone could get polemic about it. but generally i guess they right civil dry formal notifications based on fact not political discussion

And then the next one is also medical, and even more obscure in meaning. .. I really doubt anyones gone polemic on that topic 04:45, 12 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.92.40.202 (talk)

Agreed, they're completely irrelevant. (I'll never understand why scientists, especially in the medical field, constantly redefine words and create superfluous neologisms from Latin and Ancnent Greek roots they apparently don't actually understand.) I'm going to go ahead and strike it since these examples, as they say, aren't even wrong. dlainhart (talk) 08:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

demolished?

"Orwell demolished Swingler's arguments." This is clearly not neutral. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.153.118.200 (talk • contribs)

I've removed the line from the article. I'm of the opinion that the fact that he was permitted to respond in sidebars as long as the article is notable, however to say that he "destroyed" the arguments is a value judgement at worst, and POV at best. (I will point out that I've never read any of the writings refered to in that paragraph.)

If anyone wants to try and rework the sentence, feel free to do so. 156.34.238.73 01:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Magazine

Hello. I would suggest that your discussion of the magazine Polemic be made a seperate article? Just a thought. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.100.243.208 (talk • contribs)

Categorisation

I originally removed this article from Category:Theology because, well, I didn't read the part about it being a special branch of theology. And I thought it a bit misleading: although theology can be a subject of polemic, it can also be on other topics. But what else is it? I'm trying to decide whether to put it under Dialectic or Rhetoric and am at a loss (so much for a liberal education). Cleduc 04:02, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I've decided on Category:Rhetoric. Thwop. Let's see if it sticks. Cleduc 20:33, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Modern Examples

Could Ann Coulter be included? I read the NYT calling her a polemicist. Why or why not?

Done, including a number of other polemicists. ARK (talk) 16:52, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Explain or undo redirect

Provocateur redirects here without explanation. The word provocateur does not appear in the Polemic article, except in the redirect notice. Nothing here gives the ignorant Wikipedia surfer a clue why Borat is called a provocateur. I can see a faint semantic link, but nothing that justifies a redirect. Could the editor responsible please either insert material that justifies the redirect, or else restore Provocateur. Copey 2 10:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, nothing in the original stub Provocateur article helps with the Borat article either. Copey 2 10:26, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Libel laws

Polemic journalism was common in continental Europe when libel laws weren't stringent, says the text. Libel laws, though -- what are they? A link to an appropriate wikipedia article would be welcomed here. lennarth (talk) 10:03, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

What's with the plural and the redirect from the singular?

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Page moved. Ucucha 15:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

---

Polemics → Polemic — I believe that the pluralising of "polemic" to "polemics" in the title is wrong and misleading. The Merriam-Webster entry referenced in the article uses the singular polemic, as does the Oxford English Dictionary:

B. n.

1. A controversial argument; a strong verbal or written attack on a person, opinion, doctrine, etc.; (as a mass noun) writing or opinion of this kind. Also: (in sing. and pl.) aggressive debate or controversy; the practice of engaging in such debate.

In Theol. polemics (as a method of conducting debate) may be contrasted with irenics.

The plural "polemics" gives the wrong impression that the term primarily denotes a branch of learning such as mathematics, semantics etc., which, according to the OED, it only does as an obscure part of theology.

I'd therefore strongly urge that the article be renamed to "polemic" and that a redirect be placed from "polemics". --ARK (talk) 20:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, the Wiktionary definition of "polemics" (which has two valid sources of its own) matches the description found in this article, while "polemic" is used here only as an adjective. Fact is, "polemics", in this usage, is an uncountable noun, not a plural noun. "Polemic" is a descriptive term, referring either to a person involved in polemics or to an argument or controversy which seems to fall under the broader scope of polemics, so I think the singular form could be mentioned as a section under this article, if you want. And if I was interested in citing Wiktionary itself as a source , I'd point out that the first Wiktionary def. for "polemic" says "usually plural". That's a fallacy since it's not really plural – but you get what it means.
Lastly, according to the above-mentioned definition, "polemics" does not necessarily refer to theology, and your usage of the word "obscure" has no basis in any of the sources mentioned.
-Garrett W. {☎ ✍} 21:18, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Neither of the two sources in the Wictionary article on polemics is contemporary, and your assertion that the term needn't be confined to the theological definition is only supported by the assumption that it may have some currency outside its "especially" theological usage attested by the sources. That assumption may be rather tenuous in contemporary English.

My use of the term "obscure" rests on the intuition that "polemics" as the particular branch of theology concerned with aggressive disputation is no more common in contemporay English than its antonym of "irenics". A quick check through the first twenty-or-so instances of polemics in the New York Times confirms this intuition, as none of them exemplifies the theological sense; they're all plurals of the basic English noun "polemic", plain and simple.

A quick check through the first twenty occurrences of polemic in the New York Times also reveals sixteen of them to be nouns rather than the adjectives.

As a matter of fact, you might find it hard to uncover a single instance of "polemics" from, let's say, within the last twenty years or so, that isn't a simple plural of the plain old noun "polemic".

Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary are the most authoritative sources on English usage in the US and the UK, respectively. Both of them have more than a century's worth of scholarly excellence to their credit. Both of them have an entry on the plain noun "polemic" but neither has a separate entry on the fancy notion of "polemics". Are you really challenging their authority on the grounds that the Wictionary entry on "polemic", (whose credibility is undermined by the embarrassing fact that its current IPA transcription of /pʌˈlemɪk/ gets the first vowel wrong) for whatever wayward reason of its own, says "usually plural" in its first definition of the noun? ARK (talk) 02:53, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Seems like a sound enough argument. But just so you know, moving this article to "Polemic" will require additional action:

• Redirecting "Polemics" and "Talk:Polemics" to their new non-"s" equivalents
• Refactoring this article to reflect the meaning of "polemic" as a noun (especially in the lead), while the current lead text defining "polemics" should probably not be removed but rather relegated to its own section
• Possibly editing the relevant Wiktionary pages if necessary

In response to "Are you really challenging their authority ... first definition of the noun?": Of course not – that's why I made it small and put a winking smiley in there.

Lastly, I want to say that my renaming of this article was one of my early edits (sheepish grin).
-Garrett W. {☎ ✍} 09:51, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Cool. Let's make those changes, shall we? ARK (talk) 12:57, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for initiating the move procedure. You might have been able to sidestep the 7-day discussion period by treating the change as a an uncontroversial request held up by a disambiguation page. ARK (talk) 11:26, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move done; please update the article accordingly. Ucucha 15:56, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Updates made. Thanks for moving the article! ARK (talk) 16:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Marxist and related currents

Not mentioned and relatively a well known facet, with famous performers including most of the big names, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 19:37, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

notable polemicists

The whole section is unsupported by any sources. When I read this section I wonder if all of the names are there by the preference of a single WP editor. Who considers these writers Polemics? Deciding who to list in a section on notable personalities can in itself be Original Research so these sections are tricky endeavors. 97.85.185.160 (talk) 02:39, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I started the section a while back as a fairly literal translation of a corresponding section in the German Wikipedia article on polemic. Ever since the addition of that section, the most popular type of edit to this article has been people dropping by to plug their favorite polemicist, which is rather annoying. I wouldn't mind dropping the section. ARK (talk) 18:46, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Kind of confusing language?

This is in reference both to some slightly vague/confusing syntax and to the actual content of the article. The former is probably the more easily fixed (certainly it requires less familiarity with the subject), so the latter is the one I will mainly address here. For example: "polemic" can also be used as a synonym for "polemicist". And, um, admittedly that may already make talking about polemic(s) inherently confusing, but perhaps some effort should be dedicated to clarifying such. For example, I edited "A polemic" in the last sentence of the "Overview" section to just "Polemic", to refer as a whole to that style of argument instead of to a specific work of polemic writing, and also to distinguish it from a person who is "a polemic". Other changes of this nature might help the article make more sense (to me at least, as I am far from an expert in this area). Additionally, the explanation of what polemic is, in addition to being a bit syntactically vague, makes the most sense if the reader already has a firm and specific idea of what is meant by things like "dispute" vs. "debate" vs. "argument" (to be honest, I don't myself know if there really is a specific and distinct definition for each). Is it possible to be more specific here? And again, I might be able to fix the language but then someone else would have to back me up on the content. Thanks - ReySquared (talk) 21:09, 9 April 2010 (UTC)