Guardian Usage Column

[Lynne Murphy]

>An interesting column from the Guardian regarding reader complaints
>about usage.

This is the weekly "readers' ombudsman" column, which is (a) a pretty
cool thing to have, and (b) a great source for evidence of how worked
up the educated English can get about prescriptive grammar, no matter
how liberal they are in other matters.  If you follow Grant's link
and get to the actual column, you will see that it eventually gets to
the constant cry to ban Americanisms from the newspaper.  This
reflects the two Truths of British perceptions about the "decline" of
English:

- If it sounds bad, it must be American.
- If it sounds American, it must be bad.

The English may make fun of the Academie Francaise, but just as they
do not need a (written) constitution to be a constitutional monarchy,
they don't need a formal language academy to practice linguistic
cleansing.  (Not that such things are usually successful in the long
run.)

Lynne

--
M. Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 3AN    UK
phone:  +44(0)1273-678844
fax:    +44(0)1273-671320