Talk:Haze gray and underway

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[edit] "Tribal" wording

This is the place to discuss the use of the word "tribal" in this article. The article reads, It is a term of tribal pride and identification, e.g. surface ship crew use it to distinguish themselves from submarine crew or aircraft carrier crew. User:JamesMadison asks, "(Tribal? At sea?)". This is an anthropology comment. A tribe is "a social division within a traditional society consisting of a goup of interlinked families or communities sharing a common culture and dialect." Doesn't "interlinked ... communities sharing a common culture and dialect" describe the Navy (and Marines, and web programmers, and opera singers, and many other social groups)? --Jdlh | Talk 15:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

BTW the "Talk" page is the right place to discuss wording of articles. These comments don't belong in the text of the article. --Jdlh | Talk 15:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

• You correctly moved my comment to this talk page, Jdlh; it did not properly belong in the body of the article, I'll grant that. However, in my defense, there was no talk on this page 24 hours ago. Well, there's some now: we both get credit for that. As for my comment, it's about the word "tribal." It must be a generational thing, and I'm assuming you are a younger man than I (my impression obviously based solely on your written words). As for me, I did 7 patrols on a boomer (sea duty 1982-85, North Atlantic & Arctic). "Haze gray and underway" and the Submarine Service's "pokin' holes in the ocean" in my age were expresssions of disgust at our long deployments coupled with our pride that we were the guys tough enough to do it. My beef is with the word "Tribal"; it reminds me of a CBS reality series, or a shitty Venice Beach "tribal" tattoo around the bicep. I guess the word "tribal" is cheap to me, but my sea-duty isn't. You may think otherwise and you're as right as I am. Anyway, that's my two cents: I had it, you got it. - JamesMadison 09:00, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

• JamesMadison, thanks for your reply. You guessed right, I'm probably a bit younger than you (44 years old), and I certainly have less Navy experience than I do (none). I'm willing to look for a different word than "tribal" that conveys the same meaning of "social division... common culture and dialect". If you think the word "tribal" is cheap, maybe other people do too, so maybe a different word will be better. Also, I like your description of the term as expressing "disgust" and "tough". I'd love to find a way to express that in this article. Any suggestions for alternate wording? Any ideas for references that talk about this, which we can cite? Let's work together to improve the article. --Jdlh | Talk 20:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)