Barry Popik

[Beverly Flanigan]

There seems to be a general misunderstanding of my stance in all this (and
I speak only for myself).  Surely we can distinguish between scholarly work
and personal asides.  As a linguist and dialectologist, I scan Barry's
messages because I do find items in them well worth passing on to my
students; I'm not about to delete them without at least a quick
look-see.  But I too have written him privately to suggest a bit more
kindness, a bit less bluntness, etc.  Why can't we all just try to stick to
scholarly contributions (and maybe not so scholarly--"amateurs" are welcome
on this list and always have been) and save our personal comments for
private notes to our friends (or enemies)?  So, right off I'll apologize
for writing my complaint to the list rather than to Barry privately--and I
won't even excuse it as a "slip."


At 09:18 PM 9/17/01 -0500, you wrote:
>     OED editor Jesse Sheidlower just expressed very strong support
>for the value of Barry Popik's word research.  I fully agree.
>
>    Barry is one of the most remarkable researchers of words in
>American English,
>and I am doing my best to write up and polish the various material he
>has been sharing with ads-l. (There's no way I can keep up, but I'm
>trying). In the informal index I've kept of my _Comments on
>Etymology_,  Barry has 59 items listed. And this is just the tip of
>the iceberg of his material.
>
>     Those who are uninterested in his work should by all means delete
>it or filter it out. But those of us who recognize the extraordinary
>scholarly value of his work are very much interested in seeing that
>work continue. I am constantly amazed at the obscure sources he digs
>up and the unbounded energy he brings to our field.
>
>     If all the material he has produced is ever written up and
>polished, he will be recognized as one of the most prolific (and
>significant) researchers of American words and expressions. The
>challenge to our field is how to turn his extensive raw data into
>articles ready for formal publication, not how to silence him.
>
>---Gerald Cohen
>    Professor of German and Russian
>    University of Missouri-Rolla
>    research specialty: etymology
>    co-author (with Barry Popik) of _Studies in Slang, vol. 6_.
>(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang), 1999


_____________________________________________
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