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tsuwm Offline OP
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or, another take in the great descript/prescript debate.

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#5. not bad.



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Thanks tsuwm, an interesting view. He suggests that the Compact Oxford is “an evil dictionary” – I would have said from the example he quotes that it is actually just compact (and therefore lacking space to explore full background). Compare it to the full OED2 entry, of which the financial definition is only #6 of 8 line entries:

6. Great or undue expansion or enlargement; increase beyond proper limits; esp. of prices, the issue of paper money, etc. spec. An undue increase in the quantity of money in relation to the goods available for purchase; (in lay use) an inordinate rise in prices.

That seems to me a masterly exposition of what a value-neutral high quality dictionary does: it expounds how the language is being used in real life, including notes about specific connotations being applied in certain domains of speakers. The blogger’s suggestion that language has only a denotative meaning is (imho) clearly nonsense. Language acquires meaning and resonance through the associative domains in which it gets used.

As for this little conspiracy theory ~
“One of the reasons why Greek and Roman history and the Greek and Latin languages are being removed from high school and college curriculums is that fewer students will stumble upon such truths.”
~ puhLEEEESE, call the men in white coats now.

But at least, yes, #5 and 18 are not-so-worthless footnotes!

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"As for this little conspiracy theory ~
“One of the reasons why Greek and Roman history and the Greek and Latin languages are being removed from high school and college curriculums is that fewer students will stumble upon such truths.”
~ puhLEEEESE, call the men in white coats now."

Yeah, who wants to believe that educationists actually try to manipulate public eudcation?

Try out Walter Karp's excellent essay " Textbook America " at The Underground Grammarian site. Good stuff. Here's a quote:

"Something had to be done quickly or democracy might one day break out. Educational leaders quickly worked out a solution. Let the secondary schools teach the children of workers what was fit only for workers. As Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton, sternly advised the Federation of High School Teachers: 'We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.' Since there was no way to stop 'the masses' from entering high school, the only way to meet the crisis, in short, was to prevent them from learning anything liberating when they got there."

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> Yeah, who wants to believe that educationists actually try to manipulate public eudcation?

Mark, I doubt not the intentions - plural and contradictory - but I do doubt the ability to deliver. Conspiracy or cock up, I take the latter view every time.

Thanks for the article - looks very interesting from the first sections - I've saved it to read properly tomorrow.


edit: and a warm welcome to the board - I hope you find other things to interest you here.

Last edited by maverick; 01/11/06 05:35 PM.
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Well, there's always room for cocked-up conspiracies. Political history is the history of conspiracies. They don't have to be of the black helicopter kind. The conspiracists are oh so sincere.

Glad I found this place. I'll take a look around.

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Quote:

Conspiracy or cock up, I take the latter view every time.





Raze away, Occ you old ham.

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There is a difference, though, between conspiracy and policy. While on the other hand, is there a difference between conspiracy and policy?

Ditto on welcome

Last edited by inselpeter; 01/11/06 08:27 PM.
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tsuwm Offline OP
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Quote:

Well, there's always room for cocked-up conspiracies. Political history is the history of conspiracies. They don't have to be of the black helicopter kind. The conspiracists are oh so sincere.

Glad I found this place. I'll take a look around.




it should be noted that Mark is the blogmaster at witnet and the author of the linked article.

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> Mark is the blogmaster at witnet and the author of the linked article

yep, so I had assumed. You guys with websites and blogs play tag around the web with every mention or link, na?!

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