I was fascinated by your posting. No doubt you're right about the
journalist's intent, but I, too, missed a sense of insult in that
sentence. I think - as indicated in your second posting - that this is
a lovely example of the impact of context on interpretation.
It got me curious about uses of "so-called" in corpora, so I looked
at the Brown corpus. I found the same two uses as already
mentioned by Geoff Sampson. I'm appending three examples of each
for interest's sake.
Thanks for your thought-provoking posting.
Best Wishes,
-Jane Edwards
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2 types of usage of "so-called" from the Brown Corpus (3 examples of
each type):
Type I seems to be simply journalistic shorthand: a way to
squeeze a new term and a predication into a single sentence rather
than having to express them in two separate sentences.
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E34 1010 of plastics and two or more fabricating techniques. #TRANS-ILLUMINATED
E34 1020 BILLBOARDS# One of the most significant advancements in design
>E34 1030 of plastics signs is the so-called trans-illuminated billboard, now
E34 1040 being produced by several large sign manufacturers such as Advance
E34 1050 Neon Sign Co&, Los Angeles, and Industrial Electric Inc&,
E34 1060 New Orleans, La&. The essential difference between the new
E34 1070 trans-illuminated boards and existing billboards is that the former,
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D08 0270 to A&D& 220). In fact, during
D08 0280 the first century B&C&, an extensive literature sprang up devoted
>D08 0290 to these subjects, finding its typical expression in the so-called
D08 0300 "<wei> books", a number of which were specifically devoted to
D08 0310 the <Lo Shu> and related numerical diagrams, especially in connection
D08 0320 with divination. However, the <wei> books were also destroyed
D08 0330 in a series of Orthodox Confucian purges which culminated in a final
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J09 0820 using gradient elution, essentially according to Sober and Peterson.
J09 0830 The deep concave gradient employed (fig& 2) was obtained with
J09 0840 a nine-chambered gradient elution device ("Varigrad", reference
J09 0850 (8)) and has been described elsewhere. the other, a shallow concave
>J09 0860 gradient (Fig& 1), was produced with a so-called "cone-sphere"
J09 0870 apparatus, the "cone" being a 2-liter Erlenmeyer flask
J09 0880 and the "sphere," a 2-liter round-bottom flask. Each initially contained
J09 0890 1700 ~ml of buffer; in the sphere was starting buffer and
J09 0900 in the cone was final buffer, 0.50 ~M in both **f and Tris, ~pH
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With Type II there is a mismatch between the label and the actuality:
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L09 0240 God knows where". She had swished away, she had been gone for
L09 0250 a long time probably when Sarah suddenly realized that she ought to
L09 0260 stop her, pour out the coffee, so no one would drink it. But then the
>L09 0270 so-called coffee was bad enough at best, cold it was all but undrinkable-
L09 0280 especially that cup! She was deeply, horribly sure
L09 0290 that Lucien had filled it with opium. She had quarreled with Lucien,
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G12 1350 deal with distress. Some people object to this in my writing. At a
>G12 1360 party an English intellectual- so-called- asked me why I write
G12 1370 always about distress. As if it were perverse to do so! He wanted
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H02 0020 is at best inadequate and at worst nonexistent. Only a very few of
H02 0030 the more advanced ones, such as India and Pakistan, have developed
>H02 0040 systematic techniques of programing. Others have so-called development
H02 0050 plans, but some of these are little more than lists of projects
H02 0060 collected from various ministries while others are statements of goals
H02 0070 without analysis of the actions required to attain them. Only rarely
H02 0080 is attention given to accurate progress reports and evaluation. _WE
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