Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Pop tarts and book sluts



Should I be offended? A friend calls me a pop tart, perhaps because I’m always talking about popular culture, or maybe it's because my ready-made ideas just pop-up like a rather unsatisfying breakfast snack, all taste and no nutritional value. I don’t know. And then in an attempt to navigate the uncertainties of another language I come across the word "book slut" in Sweden (which actually means book end), but since I always want to impose my own meanings on words, the two terms seemed like a handy way to categorise my friends. They’re either pop tarts or book sluts. It all goes to show that too much Bakhtin is a dangerous thing, in the wrong hands. After all a word becomes one’s own when "the speaker populates it with his [sic] own semantic and expressive intention." (1981:293). So there I go again, like a real book slut!

1 comment:

Sigrid said...

funny, I guess both pop tart and book slut apply to me too, :-)