"Leader DeLay"??? What's up with that?

[Dennis R. Preston]

Yeah, but the spoonerism of either of your names is not so dang bad.

dInIs (aka pennis dreston in his adolescent days)


>on 5/16/05 9:08 PM, James C Stalker at stalker at MSU.EDU wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       James C Stalker <stalker at MSU.EDU>
>>  Subject:      Re: =?utf-8?Q?=22Leader_DeLay=22=3F=3F=3F?= What's
>>up with that?
>>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--> -
>>
>>  Were you Father Shuy or shy Father?
>
>Ah, the old game of name puns, like Jim the stalker or stalker Jim. When
>does it all end?
>
>roger the shuy
>>
>>
>>  Roger Shuy writes:
>>
>>>  on 5/14/05 10:19 PM, Laurence Horn at laurence.horn at YALE.EDU wrote:
>>>
>>>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>>  -----------------------
>>>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>>>  Subject:      Re: "Leader DeLay"??? What's up with that?
>>>>
>>>
>>>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>  --> -
>>>>
>>>>  At 12:32 PM -0500 5/14/05, Barbara Need wrote:
>>>>>>  One of my professors goes by her first name with graduate students but
>>>>>>  prefers undergraduates to call her Dr., specifically because one does
>>>>>>  not have to hold a Ph.D. to lecture at my university. She told me that
>>>>>>  she would be fine without that title if she were teaching at an
>>>>>>  institution where all teaching were doctors.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  -Lal
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  An old study (source forgotten) relates "Dr." and "Professor" titles
>>>>>>>  to prestige of institution. More prestige, less doctoring and
>>>>>>>  professoring.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  dInIs
>>>>>
>>>>>  At the University of Chicago, professors are (traditionally) called
>>>>>  Mr or Mrs/Ms/Miss, not Doctor, not Professor. Someone once explained
>>>>>  this to me, but I don't remember what the UofC rationale was.
>>>>
>>>>  Probably the same as at Yale (we do share that [+ gothic] feature,
>>>>  after all), where "Mr. X" was de rigueur for men, and "Miss/Mrs. X"
>>>>  for women (this was when institutions like Yale and the N. Y. Times
>>>>  didn't deign to recognize "Ms.").   So it was Mr. Bloch  and Miss
>>>>  Haas and such.  But then first-naming came in, along with jeans and
>>>>  such, before I arrived in '81, and it's been downhill ever since.
>>>>  The rationale for the earlier practice as stated to me was that it
>>>>  was assumed that everyone at Yale is both a professor and a PhD, so
>>>>  it would be infra dig to flaunt such titles.
>>>>
>>>>  Larry
>>>>
>>>  But I'll be you never had the problem that we had at Georgetown, where,
>>>  after the Jesuits began wearing civies in public,  Protestant male teachers
>>>  like me sometimes very mistakenly got called Father.
>>>
>>>  Roger
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  James C. Stalker
>>  Department of English
>>  Michigan State University
>>


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
        Asian and African Languages
Wells Hall A-740
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office: (517) 353-0740
Fax: (517) 432-2736