A rose (of Mohammed) by any other name . . .

Some of you have probably read this news: that Iranian pastry sellers, their display cases filled with danish pastries (which Iranians love to eat) but the streets in front of their stores (metaphorically speaking) filled with people outraged by many things Danish, have taken to calling these pastries "Rose of Mohammed" pastries. As the Yahoo! News article points out, this re-naming smacks of Congress' resolution to substitute the name "freedom fries" for "French fries" when the French didn't back the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. No matter that the pastries are baked in Tehran (or, for that matter, that the fries are fried in the Capital Hill cafeteria). Just now, something is rotten in the state of Denmark . . . can't you smell it whenever you read the word "danish"?

Of course we (well, okay--I) chuckle a bit, knowing that such name changes are emotionally-driven attempts to make silk purses out of what have become, in the eyes of some, sows' ears. As Juliet knows, the thing named--in Saussure's language, the signified--does not change: the relationship between that thing and its name is an arbitrary one, determined by usage. "Downsize" may sound more pleasant in a news release than "lay off" does, but people are no less unemployed for all the euphemizing.

But such moments preform a useful reminder for us: We get reminded here--sometimes so blatantly that we laugh as a result--that language isn't neutral and valueless but, due to the very arbitrariness of the signifier-signified relationship, is a tripwire-laden jungle of implicit and explicit cultural judgments made, often, so long ago that we no longer recognize them or, in some cases, no longer think they matter when they are brought to our attention. This isn't a plea on behalf of politically-correct language--or against it, either. Our language--all language--is simply thus. What that fact should compel us to give some thought to is, when we go about naming and describing the things of the world, what we want our language for them to say about us as individuals and about us as a culture.