Canadian usage

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

over on the newsgroup sci.lang, there's a thread on "Canadian usage"
that dismays me.  it's another one of those searches for a *language
essence*, in this case what is truly canadian -- shared generally by
canadians and not shared with other groups.   so people suggest
characteristically canadian items, and other people write in to say
that they're canadian and *they* don't recognize this usage, or to say
that the item is also used in the u.k., or in the northern u.s. or
wherever (so it's not really *canadian*).  when you exclude these two
types of items, there's really nothing left.

i'm waiting for someone to be told that, well, if they don't have a
particular usage, then they're not *really* canadian.

the problem is that this is *sci.lang*, and the participants are
supposed to know something about language.  (yes, i know, a lot of the
participants seem to be deeply, and aggressively, clueless, but still
one hopes.)  they seem to be unaware of the simplest facts about
variation.  how have we -- linguists, dialectologists, variationists --
so failed to educate our students and colleagues?  they just seem to
fall back on folk conceptualizations of language varieties as unique
unities standing outside actual people and social groups.

arnold, perhaps oversensitive after confronting the stories on the
front page of today's NYT (thank goodness erin, steve, etc. appeared
inside)