Words don't lie, part III: Campaign rhetoric gives way to campaign linguistics

[Marc Velasco]

[she] goes on to equate undiagrammable sentences like
Palin's with sloppy, irrational thinking...

they may not be equal, but are they correlated?

And more generally, does clear writing/speaking convey clear thinking, or is
it just sophistry obscuring wrongheadedness?


On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Words don't lie, part III: Campaign rhetoric gives way to
>              campaign linguistics
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 10/9/2008 11:14 AM, Dennis Baron wrote:
> >True enough, but
> >Slate's grammarian goes on to equate undiagrammable sentences like
> >Palin's with sloppy, irrational thinking ­ expressing the kind of
> >attitude about linguistic correctness that all of us have heard at
> >least once in our lives, often from an irrational grammarian
> >criticizing an essay we handed in for homework.
>
> I was taught that if you can't write it clearly,
> then you haven't thought it clearly.  But
> apparently I was subversively mis-instructed.
>
> Joel
>
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