Sorry about this but Re-reading through Macfarlane's post of 08 Aug 12 - 06:20 PM whilst doing some tedious digital editing I find there are a couple of things that I would be remiss in not responding to...

Firstly:

Oh, we're plucking phrases from a spaghetti western now are we?

I was thinking more of Hollywood Westerns, sort of John Wayne style. If paraphrased in Spaghetti Westerns I can, off hand, think only of Tuco (Eli Wallach) in The Good, the Band and the Ugly who after shooting an vengeful opponent from beneath his grubby bathwater utters the immortal line: "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk." It just happens to be a classic scene from one of my all time favourite films:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZXlhSgq7us

*

The second is more serious:

This is irrelevant to this discussion, but it is another unsupported assertion stated as though it were fact. Care to find a creditable reference for it?

This would involve trawling through the legacy of Kinsey's Team who were widely reputed to have numbed their own sexuality to such an extent they could only 'get off' by recourse to increasingly bizarre & self-destructive practices. Worse (much worse as I say) is that they drew much of their published data (i.e. the sexual responses of infants) from the paedophiles with whom they frequently colluded, and, by implication, encouraged. Yorkshire TV made a documentary about this in 1998; Hollywood made a biopic comedy in 2004.

As for its relevance to the discussion, I offered it as a precedence on the limits that human scientist have in gaining an objective perspective on any aspect of human behaviour / culture without losing sight of the fact that it's always going to be subjective anyway. I guess to believe otherwise takes real faith, huh?

"So what has all this to do with the 1954 Definition, Blandy?" I hear hapless reader ask. Well, The Pragmatist (like any linguist) observes and describes the mutability of language in terms of its living usage. The Pedant, on the other hand, prescribes grammatical correctness by way of enforcing a holy law in fear of the feral reality of the wilderness, innit? The Pedant will thus delight in the Oxford Comma, whilst the Grocer's Apostrophe will reduce them to blustering fits (we've seen a fair few of these from Bridge & Macfarlane I have to say). The Pragmatist, OTOH, will delight in the Grocer's Apostrophe as integral to the living lore of language, regarding with suspicion any correctness that insist language is anything other than mutable.   

The 1954 Definition is prescriptive musical pedantry that has nothing whatsoever to do with the entirely pragmatic musical usage it attempts to define. It's appeal is, therefore, always going to be to the more egg-bound Folk Enthusiast (those self-styled purists we're always hearing about?) for whom Taxonomical (and Taxidermic) correctness is paramount.

Perhaps Richard would like to paraphrase that for me so it meets with his exacting standards of conciseness and clarity.