Wednesday 21 January 2009

own your emotions

This use of the word feels new to me:

Student ownership of the learning event. (in reference to scaffolding)
Near the beginning of the film Shortbus, the relationship counsellor speaks of owning emotions.
A colleague once complained of feeling sidelined and that he didn't feel any more ownership of the course we were co-teaching.

It has the idea that something abstract is yours, that you had some part in its creation or how it came into being, that you own it so you can do what you like with it and it's your responsibility to do so as no-one else is going to do it for you, etc etc etc. You hear people speak of owning their emotions.

On another level, it's an example of how native speakers have to come to terms with new words (e.g. wimp) or new uses of words (wiked) and how NSs acquire this.

But I don't see much support for it in the corpora I have been looking at. Anyone else?