Damn Indefinite Article

Quick, explain any dif­fer­ence you see between being “drunk” and being “a drunk”. Not much, is there? Just one let­ter. Per­haps I am excep­tion­al but I would be will­ing to wager that many peo­ple do not con­sid­er how indef­i­nite arti­cles can dras­ti­cal­ly change read­ing com­pre­hen­sion. What, exact­ly, does “a” do? In my drunk exam­ple, “a” turns adjec­tive into noun; my descrip­tor cod­i­fies into tan­gi­bil­i­ty by adding one let­ter. This is dan­ger­ous, I think. I have been, on record, resis­tant to labels from near­ly webl­o­go­ge­n­e­sis; I believe I have final­ly dis­cov­ered that this resis­tance resides in “a”.

It makes things too strong for me. Per­haps I have lit­tle faith or much arro­gance in think­ing that real­i­ty or noun­hood can­not with­stand this weight of being, but words don’t describe real­i­ty; so it should be no sur­prise if the vest­ment of “a”, when worn by adjec­tives, takes peo­ple fur­ther from fact. I have been through most of this before. Some­thing new: Using “a” in ref­er­ence to spe­cif­ic per­sons, includ­ing one­self, is noth­ing more than sub­tle vio­lence. It pigeon­holes and sin­gles out for more pigeon­hol­ing. I’d much rather be described as “some­thing” than defined as “one of some­thing” Using “a” in this man­ner; “I’m a Catholic”, “She’s a fem­i­nist”, “He’s a black”, has dis­tinct “Oh, one of those peo­ple…” over­tones. Say­ing “I’m Catholic”, “She’s fem­i­nist”, “He’s black” gives equiv­a­lent fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion but avoids any sort of pigeon­hol­ing.

Or not.

I believe I used no arti­cles [except as exam­ples] while writ­ing this post.

Links of the Day: Gallery of Regret­table Food and The Com­pa­ny Cook­book.

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