Acocella piece in The New Yorker

[john]

Jo, there are frequently very bad things in the New Yorker. It's
just that in this case you're a specialist so you know that it's bad.
The entire idea of the New Yorker is trying to write literary and
accessible pieces on 'high' topics for non-specialists, so this sort of
thing is inevitable. 

John 

On 12.05.2012 11:38, Johanna Rubba wrote:


> Joan Acocella has a review of Henry Hitchings' "The Language Wars"
in 
> this week's New Yorker. It stinks. Real bad. She can't tell the 
>
difference between prescriptive and descriptive rules. She accuses 
>
Hitchings of making illogical arguments and then makes several of her 
>
own (accepting language change is tantamount to going back to the 
>
dentistry of Samuel Johnson's time???) She equates vernacular 
>
languages with slang. I've rarely seen anything this bad in the NYer.
>

> I sent in a response letter.
> 
> Jo
> 
> Dr. Johanna Rubba,
Professor, Linguistics
> Linguistics Minor Advisor
> English
Department
> Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
> Tel.
805.756.2184
> Dept. Tel 805.756.2596
> E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu
>
URL: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>
************************************************
> "Justice is what love
looks like in public."
> - Cornel West