Official English

[Beverly Flanigan]

I'm of mixed minds on this issue:  In the past I've supported a closed list
(mainly when the ranters against Ebonics/AAVE were on board), but in the
matter of EOL/BilingEd, it seems to me we've had a fairly decent,
respectful dialogue--and if we've provided some useful facts and
information, that's all to the good.  Frankly, I'd rather have a good
knock-down, drag-out debate on these types of issues than restrict the list
to what seems increasingly to be an endless citation of words and their
origins.  At least we're talking about real-world language issues!


At 05:52 PM 6/4/01 -0400, Dennis Preston wrote:

>It's too bad that respondents to this list who have only public
>press and hearsay information are unwilling to even consider
>professional and scientific results, but we made the list for the
>public, and, if that's what you want, we'll stick to it, but I am now
>even more convinced that this should be a professional list; I spend
>a goodly portion of my professional life working on just such
>misperceptions and misinformation; I'd like to have a professional
>home to keep clear of opinions which I can read every day in my
>home-town newspaper. I suggest we bring the matter of access to this
>list up for discussion again.
>
>dInIs
>
>


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm