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I think his arguments are contentious at best, pretentious for the most part, and lack the very qualities he claims to aspire to: in short he demonstrates "a pseudo-intellectual contempt for clarity, careful argument, and felicitous expression." Nearly every one of his points is based on mere assertion (I choose this word with consummate care) and he uses these to frequently extrapolate complete straw men that he then proceeds to knock down ~ for example, his suggestion that the descriptivist school of language studies is of a conspiratorial group which propounded the idea that everything is relative, hence largely inconsequential, and that the use of language is primarily an exercise in power, hence to be devalued. All of my readings and studies in this area points in quite another direction: clarity of understanding, of the kind enjoined by George Orwell indeed, is enhanced by the ability to describe and deconstruct the intellectual and social baggage carried in particular forms and applications of language. To be able to recognise the exercise of prestige varieties of English, for example, does not devalue that variety: it adds to our understanding of when that variety may be appropriate and when not at all appropriate.
To take only one other example at random, because I do not think his arguments even merit full study...
Excise "uh...like...uh" from most teenage conversations, and the effect is like sticking a pin into a balloon. says our self-appointed expert in the complete analysis of the world. Wrong: it is a matter of highly researched fact that the largest single body of language creativity tends to occur in this group in most communities. Doubtless in his self-obsessed little bubble it is unlikely to have occurred to him to consider that in talking to him most teenagers are unlikely to wish to communicate much at all, so his personal experience of speech habits in this community are probably without external meaning.
Entire Thread Subject Posted By Posted verbicide wwh 08/04/03 05:52 PM Re: verbicide Jackie 08/05/03 01:09 AM Re: verbicide wwh 08/05/03 02:01 AM Re: verbicide TheFallibleFiend 08/05/03 12:44 PM Re: verbicide maverick 08/05/03 01:57 PM Re: verbicide Capfka 08/05/03 02:07 PM Re: verbicide Bean 08/05/03 02:06 PM Re: verbicide Bobyoungbalt 08/05/03 02:47 PM Re: verbicide Capfka 08/05/03 03:30 PM Re: verbicide Jackie 08/05/03 05:34 PM Re: verbicide Zed 08/05/03 06:54 PM Re: verbicide TheFallibleFiend 08/06/03 02:45 PM Re: verbicide TheFallibleFiend 08/06/03 06:02 PM Re: verbicide wwh 08/06/03 06:18 PM Re: verbicide Jackie 08/07/03 12:54 AM Re: standardized tests Bobyoungbalt 08/07/03 02:00 AM Re: standardized tests TheFallibleFiend 08/07/03 11:58 AM Re: standardized tests Wordwind 08/07/03 01:15 PM Re: standardized tests TheFallibleFiend 08/07/03 01:48 PM Re: standardized tests Zed 08/07/03 10:58 PM
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