Minding the store, formerly Bush eggcorn

[James C Stalker]

        I was fixin’ supper when my wife informed me of the imminent collapse of
Western civilization, that is, the disassembling of the prisoners at gitmo.
However, I was prepared.  We’ve been disassembling folks for somewhere
around four hundred years.  As for the language gaffe, Gould Brown informed
us many years ago that:

        We may not be able to effect all that is desirable; but, favoured as our
country is, with great facilities for carrying forward the work of
improvement, in every thing which can contribute to national glory and
prosperity, I would, in conclusion of this topic, submit—that a critical
knowledge of our common language is a subject worthy of the particular
attention of all who have the genius and the opportunity to attain it; that
on the purity and propriety with which Americans authors write this
language, the reputation of our national literature greatly depends;--that
in the preservation of it from all changes which ignorance may admit or
affectation invent, we ought to unite in having one common interest;--that a
fixed and settled orthography is of great importance, as a means of
preserving the etymology, history, and identity of words;--that a grammar
freed from errors and defects, and embracing a complete code of definitions
and illustrations, rules and exercises, is of primary importance to every
student and a great aid to teachers;--that as the vices of speech as well as
of manners are contagious, it becomes those who have the care of youth, to
be masters of the language in its purity and elegance, and to avoid as much
as possible every thing that is reprehensible either in thought or
expression. (p. 101)

Brown, Goold.  (1851).  The Grammar of English Grammars with an Introduction
Historical and Critical. 10th Ed.  New York: William Wood & Co.

I guess W has infected us all with his vile vice of speech and manners, and
Mr. Brown would worry not only about the youth of our country but the
leadership as well. Mr. Brown seems to be suggesting that if you can’t
handle the language  according to rule and proper expectation, you can’t
handle anything.   I get really uncomfortable when the attack becomes an
attack on usage rather than on substantive issues.

        My post is not a support of Bush.  He is not a President who generally
espouses policies I would like to see implemented.  It is a post to suggest
that we must mind our own store.  If we, as linguists who focus on variation
and change, are to be nonjudgmental observers of language use, shouldn’t
we be discussing the disassembling of the gitmo prisoners as a language
issue rather than a political one?  Is ‘disassembling’ a reasonable
phonological substitute for
‘dissemble’?  Maybe Bush is a filum guy.

As my Turkish students would say, as for our opinions of his polices, we
should post to a political site?

Jim



Wilson Gray writes:

> On May 31, 2005, at 9:26 PM, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       RonButters at AOL.COM
>> Subject:
>> =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20=A0=20=A0=20=A0=20Re:=20Eggcorn=3F=20disass?
>>               = =?ISO-8859-1?Q?emble?=
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --------
>>
>> In a message dated 5/31/05 9:14:48 PM, dcamp at CHILITECH.NET writes:
>>
>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>
>>>> And he always spreads a smirky grin when he "instructs" us on word
>>>> meanings.
>>>
>>> Or, he always smiles when he catches himself in a mistake.
>>>
>>> I have noticed that the people who dote on Bushisms don't have a
>>> camera
>>> following them around 24/7. Maybe it's just as well. Or maybe we all
>>> are
>>> errorless when we speak off the cuff to a group. Let's see hands.
>>>
>>> D
>>>
>>>
>>
>> It isn't only Bush, of course. Anyone in the public eye gets this kind
>> of
>> close scrutiny. One gets the impression from all this that Bush is not
>> very
>> bright--that, whereas Reagan just had the good sense to read the cue
>> cards, Bush
>> strikes out on his own. So I guess we should be proud of his courage.
>>
>> Eisenhower was another one who was frequently made fun of for his
>> press-conference manner of speaking,though, as I recall, the reporters
>> didn't so much
>> question his diction as his syntax.
>
> The more mature among us may recall what was supposedly a
> (stereo)typical Eisenhowerism:
>
> "I love, as it were, my country, so to speak."
>
> -Wilson Gray
>
>>
>> Clinton seems to have escaped either kind of scrutiny--though he
>> certainly
>> got chastized for his overintellectualizing the meaning of "is." And,
>> as I
>> recall, people made fun of Carter's accent (and his encounter with a
>> killer
>> rabbit), and Johnson's accent as well as his swearing.
>>
>



James C. Stalker
Department of English
Michigan State University