Trudgill in Vocabula

[Dennis R. Preston]

No, I do not know of what you speak, for I am not speaking of
clarity, effectiveness, rhetorical and organizational
appropriatenesses at all. But those who find others whose behavior on
such matters as 'who' versus 'whom' (or reference to possessives) to
be utterers of "gibberish" have no business publishing magazines on
"language" other than those which supplement the Rush Limbaugh Show.

dInIs

>dInIs wrote:
>
>Then one ought to reexamine the basis for prescriptivism; it is, as
>several of us have pointed out in print over the years (me most
>recently in the Watts and Trudgill Alternative Histories of English
>volume; arnold most recently in his commentary and research on the
>flap over reference to possessives), cut from exactly the same cloth.
>
>***
>
>"One ought to"? I suppose you mean "I ought to."
>
>I understand how you can think that a prescriptivist attitude toward language
>is incompatible with liberal social and political views (in fact, Trudgill
>speaks to this in his June Vocabula article), but I don't necessarily agree.
>Many people's thoughts and beliefs are richer, more nuanced, than you seem to
>allow for. What's more, "one is" no fan of idiocy, no votery of gibberish.
>
>Do you excuse Bush's inability to speak a clear sentence (without a script
>before him) as you condemn his politics? If so, then you should know of what I
>speak. Or could it be that you applaud his policies?
>
>Still, I find this topic interesting, and I invite you to submit an article
>about the relationship between politics and prescriptivism to The Vocabula
>Review.
>
>
>
>Robert Hartwell Fiske
>Editor and Publisher
>The Vocabula Review
>www.vocabula.com
>______________________
>
>The Vocabula Review
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>______________________
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic,
      Asian & African Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
e-mail: preston at msu.edu
phone: (517) 353-9290