[lg policy] Good grammar leads to violence at Starbucks?

Slavomír Čéplö bulbulthegreat at GMAIL.COM
Tue Aug 17 08:50:24 UTC 2010


Dennis,

I'm still at my first cup of coffee, so most of my brain doesn't work
yet, but the part that does has to wonder where the 'good grammar' /
'good English' part is. To quote Ms. Rosenthal: "I refused to say
'without butter or cheese. ... Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a
stickler for correct English." Is that all? And if, um, WTF?

Yours,

bulbul

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 04:07, Dennis Baron <debaron at illinois.edu> wrote:
> There;s a new post on the Web of Language: Good grammar leads to violence at
> Starbucks?
> Apparently an English professor was ejected from a Starbucks on Manhattan’s
> Upper West Side for—she claims—not deploying Starbucks mandatory
> corporate-speak. The story immediately lit up the internet, turning her into
> an instant celebrity. Just as Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant
> who couldn’t take it any more, became the heroic employee who finally bucked
> the system when he cursed out nasty passengers over the intercom and
> deployed the emergency slide to make his escape, Lynne  Rosenthal was the
> customer who cared so much about good English that she finally stood up to
> the coffee giant and got run off the premises by New York’s finest for her
> troubles. Well, at least that’s what she says happened.
>
> According to the New York Post, Rosenthal, who says she has an English Ph.
> D. from Columbia, ordered a multigrain bagel at Starbucks but “became
> enraged when the barista at the franchise” asked, "Do you want butter or
> cheese?" She continued, "I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.' When
> you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want.
> Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English." When
> she refused to answer, she claims that she was told, "You’re not going to
> get anything unless you say butter or cheese!" And then the cops came.
>
> read who did what to whom at the Web of Language: http://bit.ly/weblan
> ____________________
> Dennis Baron
> Professor of English and Linguistics
> Department of English
> University of Illinois
> 608 S. Wright St.
> Urbana, IL 61801
> office: 217-244-0568
> fax: 217-333-4321
> http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron
> read the Web of Language:
> http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
>
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>
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