Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-76.97.80.106-20130811163656/@comment-24590102-20140826054617

WC-83 wrote: The idea of Elected Monarchy is not redundant, as the Monarch acts as any other Monarch, the only difference being that he is elected as opposed to a Hereditary Monarchy, where he is born. Yes, but that's no different to a president who, depending on culture, may have absolute power or no power at all and is, equally, elected with the only difference being one of terminology; specifically the creation of unnecessary ambiguity via the misuse of existing terms for concepts which already have adequately clear diction.

Moreover, it is especially the case for English diction, that one must be suspicious of alterations to diction - which one can find clearly documented in the etymology of a word. More so than any other language, English has an abundantly documented history of alterations to diction which serve no better function than political manipulation and out-group marginalisation. By way of example, there are many synonyms for the word malefactor which were coined for the express purpose of building class-vilification into the English language. Serfs attached to a villa used to be called villains, heretics were called miscreants, and the term rogue comes from "roger" which, outside Canterbury, was a noun referring to vagrants. Yet, through the strategic misuse of language, all of these vulnerable classes were vilified through the words used to refer to them - for no better reason than marginalisation of out-group members. These are just a few examples you'll find if you pay attention to the etymology of words in English and this kind of thing occurs again and again and again - far too often to be pure coincidence. It's the same deal with "offensive language" which, in English, is restricted to words of Germanic origin and excludes all non-Germanic synonyms for those words because the point of "offensive language" objections is to censor "lower" class expression via implicit national/racial vilification.

The point of my little rant is that coinage of new terminology is not to be accepted on trust because the etymology of English diction documents many such changes which are tacit breaches of social trust and many more which are simply the product of illiteracy.

Coming back to presidents and other elected heads of state, the Oxford diction specifies that a president is the one who presides (i.e. "sits before") in relation to a strictly republican state. This presents us with an interesting dilemma because, with the possible exception of the ancient Roman Republic, we are yet to see any example of a state which is a republic in more than name only. So, perhaps it is the term "president" which is redundant given that, by strict core diction, there is no such thing as a president and, by contemporary usage, a president is different from an elected monarch in name only. And this whole issue of the non-existence of things hiding behind the misuse of terminology describing those things brings us back to my little rant about the strategic misuse of language for the purpose of political manipulation and out-group marginalisation.