Candice Bergen | 10/09/2009 12:00 am
Candice Bergen: Where Have All the Linguistics Gone?
In response to: Now that we've lost Pulitzer Prize-winning 'oracle of language' William Safire, to whom should we turn for linguistic wisdom?
Language? Back in the day it was SI Hayakawa. Then Safire. Ken Tynan as well. And John Simon could be withering about misplaced punctuation and ungainly adverbs. But now? Not a clue.
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Have some empathy for all the college/university speech professors who are challenging the destruction of verbal language with the curse of "like" used as every other word by students and the public at-large.
Elynne Chaplik-Aleskow http://LookAroundMe.blogspot.com
Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Wright College
AB-SO-LUTLEY!! I was only recently lamenting the pitfalls of spell check, and even worse, grammar check. Spell check will not catch correctly spelled words being used in the wrong context; and grammar check can’t handle complex sentences so if a writer accepts Microsoft’s changes, he ends up with mush… or a fourth-grade reading level.
Conversely, these tools also stifle any linguistic creativity; can you imagine e.e. cummings composing poetry in Word?
On the curse of "he" for indeterminate gender - it’s a longstanding rule of speech in many languages, including English, to use the masculine by default to refer to a person of unknown gender.
More recently in English "they" is becoming more commonly used as a singular for this purpose. I don’t really like using "they" this way, but it’s more economical of breath and ink than "he or she" every single time just to make sure everyone knows you’re being inclusive.
But, for example, concerning an anonymous driver on the road, it just seems more natural for me to think, "That guy in front of me… he’s turning…" even though it’s just as likely it’s a woman.
Here are some of mine, Candice: a troop is a collection of troopers! Put ‘I’ at the end of a list only if it is in the nominative case, (Candice and I met the other day) otherwise the accusative/dative case (Candice met Liz and ME) is correct. The apricots were ripe and RIFE for picking!
Dyslexia has been ignored for years and now we see its fruition. It’s how we got to all that "short attention span theatre crap".
And as for "where are all the linguists", they’re in continuing education classes learning how to Tweet … or waiting for their grandchildren to come home from school to show them how!
ROTFLOL!!
I mourn the passing of the Harvard comma (or, "serial comma"). If ketchup and mustard makes a yucky brown mess, then "relish, mustard and ketchup" says, "relish … and a yucky brown mess". (Period after quotation.) "Relish, mustard, and ketchup" tells me that we’re talking about three separate condiments.
Then, there’s the ellipsis! I over-use it, but I use it correctly. A friend parks her finger on the period key until a string of dots fill as long a space as her mood dictates. Three dots … count them … three.
Oh — a couple or a team is a singular unit! It does; it does not do. ("A couple takes a vacation", not "A couple take a vacation.")
This morning I read a posting on wowOwow from someone who typed "u" every time she meant "you". I’m still cringing, hours later! Someone should explain to her the difference between typing and texting.
I’m stepping down from my soap box now. Thank you for the use of the hall.