What does made in the U.S.A. mean?

[OzziePete]

FWIW, my original post was not bagging on W or anyone, just the confusing semantical nature of country of origin designations.  It's like the phrases "Organic, Natural, or Green."  There's no telling what those mean but only exist to make one feel warm and fuzzy.

That's exactly how I understood it. There are lots of terms that don't really mean what they litterally say, or don' t really mean anything at all. 'Biological', 'Light', 'Life Long Warranty'... The grand award in my eyes is for 'ASAP'. 'As soon as possible' is NOT synonomous with 'Drop everything and do it Right Now'. Our culture, and our language with it, is suffering from severe semantic erosion.

That - and patriotic overdrive, hence the semantics to stick a label as 'Made in [country]'  on something you want to sell in that country. Wana, myself and other Aussies could just as easily buy some Warmoth stuff, slap it all together here in Aus and tag it as made in Australia, as the instrument itself didn't come together as a guitar til we decided to piece it all together. The correct terminology would be, of course, Designed and Assembled in Australia, but that starts sounding like you bought all these dodgy parts and added 10% on top mark up. I do like Wana's comment about tagging stuff as Made on Earth.

 

[yyz2112]

FWIW, my original post was not bagging on W or anyone, just the confusing semantical nature of country of origin designations.  It's like the phrases "Organic, Natural, or Green."  There's no telling what those mean but only exist to make one feel warm and fuzzy.

That's exactly how I understood it. There are lots of terms that don't really mean what they litterally say, or don' t really mean anything at all. 'Biological', 'Light', 'Life Long Warranty'... The grand award in my eyes is for 'ASAP'. 'As soon as possible' is NOT synonomous with 'Drop everything and do it Right Now'. Our culture, and our language with it, is suffering from severe semantic erosion.

You mean Belgian culture?

Every language has its colloquialisms and loosely intended semantics, not to mention variances from region to region (dialects). Also, language changes with societal convention, again, this is not unique to any one tongue or culture.

 

[ByteFrenzy]

FWIW, my original post was not bagging on W or anyone, just the confusing semantical nature of country of origin designations.  It's like the phrases "Organic, Natural, or Green."  There's no telling what those mean but only exist to make one feel warm and fuzzy.

That's exactly how I understood it. There are lots of terms that don't really mean what they litterally say, or don' t really mean anything at all. 'Biological', 'Light', 'Life Long Warranty'... The grand award in my eyes is for 'ASAP'. 'As soon as possible' is NOT synonomous with 'Drop everything and do it Right Now'. Our culture, and our language with it, is suffering from severe semantic erosion.

You mean Belgian culture?

Every language has its colloquialisms and loosely intended semantics, not to mention variances from region to region (dialects). Also, language changes with societal convention, again, this is not unique to any one tongue or culture.

Well, 'Belgian' culture, if there's such a thing, is already globalism at it's finest. I'm actually Dutch, married to a Belgian girl, both living in Belgium, which makes my son Belgian. If the two (and then three) of us had lived 10km more to the north, my son would have been just as Dutch as he's now Belgian.

I work for the Belgian branch of a German Telecoms company. The company 'official' language for international business is English. So yes, ASAP is one of the terms I run into almost daily and that does not end irritating me because it's used so completely out of the original context.

But I think I recognize the same tendency accross several languages and cultures to have some sort of 'erosion' of terminology, reducing scientific terms to marketing slang, A lot of those semantics were never intended to be 'loose' in any sense, they were made that way at a later time with coldly calculated intent.