Fabric Words used metaphorically

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#203176 - 11/09/11 11:01 PM Re: the ungrammatical walk at nigh [Re: Faldage]
Jackie Carpal Tunnel Registered: 03/15/00 Posts: 11578 Loc: Louisville, Kentucky	You know me, don't you?
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#203184 - 11/10/11 08:03 AM Re: the ungrammatical walk at nigh [Re: Jackie]
Faldage Carpal Tunnel Registered: 12/01/00 Posts: 13653	For those of y'all not inclined to read the Swift missive, it is essentially a prescriptivist tirade against the devolution of the language. It has forty some odd instances of which being used in a context where modern prescriptivists would demand that be used.
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#203185 - 11/10/11 04:25 PM Re: the ungrammatical walk at nigh [Re: Faldage]
bexter addict Registered: 11/17/10 Posts: 677 Loc: Middle Earth	One of my most favourite essays on language and writing was by Orwell, where he complains about academics using big words for the sake of sounding impressive and how you should use small words and always be concise - something I was always told not to be throughout school, as one teacher put it "if you know a longer, larger, bigger word (and one that the examiner may not even know) use it, and they will probably give you more marks for supposedly being intelligent"...I'll try and find a link to it somewhere _________________________ ----The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false----
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#203186 - 11/10/11 04:27 PM Re: the ungrammatical walk at nigh [Re: bexter]
bexter addict Registered: 11/17/10 Posts: 677 Loc: Middle Earth	ahahaa I have found it, and upon reading it again, my love for Orwell has grown once more Orwell Essay _________________________ ----The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false----
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#203187 - 11/10/11 05:26 PM Re: up down sideways and away [Re: bexter]
zmjezhd Carpal Tunnel Registered: 08/13/05 Posts: 3269 Loc: R'lyeh	he complains about academics using big words for the sake of sounding impressive and how you should use small words and always be concise One should use words appropriate for one's audience and to the context of what one is writing. _________________________ Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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#203189 - 11/11/11 04:50 AM Re: up down sideways and away [Re: zmjezhd]
bexter addict Registered: 11/17/10 Posts: 677 Loc: Middle Earth	of course! I do love the first example he uses, makes me smile every time _________________________ ----The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false----
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#203327 - 11/18/11 12:30 PM Re: up down sideways and away [Re: zmjezhd]
Rhubarb Commando old hand Registered: 11/13/11 Posts: 1029 Loc: Lancaster, UK	I am in total concurence with this viewpoint, zm, and it is my personal intention to, at all times, eliminate all sesquipedalian polysyllabism from my utterances, whether delivered by inscription or by oral means. And I wouldn't dream of starting sentences with conjunctions or using prepositions to end with. _________________________ I'm immortal until proven otherwise
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#203345 - 11/18/11 09:40 PM Re: the ungrammatical walk at nigh [Re: bexter]
goofy member Registered: 01/06/08 Posts: 132	Originally Posted By: bexter ahahaa I have found it, and upon reading it again, my love for Orwell has grown once more Orwell Essay My problem with this essay is unsupported assertion that English is in decline. Orwell gives no evidence that the words and phrases he doesn't like are more common now than they need to be, or more common now than they were in the past. And he makes an unsupported assumption that one's language is a direct link to one's thought, and vice versa.
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#203346 - 11/19/11 03:33 AM Re: the ungrammatical walk at nigh [Re: goofy]
BranShea Carpal Tunnel Registered: 06/23/06 Posts: 5249 Loc: Netherlands, the Hague	Agree, it's not in decline. Times are different from Orwell's time. We only have a tiny stroke of babylonism. Internet, advertising, intensive migration all over the globe. It affects all current languages.
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#203347 - 11/19/11 07:47 AM Re: the ungrammatical walk at nigh [Re: Umber]
bexter addict Registered: 11/17/10 Posts: 677 Loc: Middle Earth	Goofy, it was written way back in the forties when all the annoying phrases seemed (to him at least) to be "rearing their ugly heads"...his essay style is true to proper form, being more an intelligent conversation put down in words and in such a way as to make his point most profoundly. Orwell is a great master of essays and the comic and ironic streak can be seen in all of his essays. He is mainly annoyed with the people who destroy the meaning of what they say by not being imaginative and creating their own metaphors and thus bogging down their writing into a practically unintelligible babble of polysyllabic sesquipedilian foreign inanities. (Apologies for the typos etc and the length. Am typing this from my phone and you kind of lose track of length and spelling...!) _________________________ ----The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false----
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