Nobody's Perfect Dept.

[Jonathan Lighter]

Benedict Anderson is so famous he's in Wackipedia:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Anderson

  More and more I see the spelling "ideolect," BTW.

  JL




  Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU> wrote:
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Poster: Beverly Flanigan
Subject: Re: Nobody's Perfect Dept.
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Here's another gem, from a thesis I'm reading, quoting one Benedict
Anderson, who writes on "imagined communities" and the rise of "print
capitalism": The Reformation and the use of vernaculars allowed
"idiolects, i.e. groupings of vernacular dialects, to be assembled, within
definite limits, into print-languages far fewer in number" (1991, p.
43). Footnote (Anderson's or my student's?): "An idiolect is the entire
repertoire of lects (i.e. language varieties) for any given language."

At 08:50 AM 12/15/2006, you wrote:
> From a professional explication for undergraduates of cultural-theory terms:
>
> "Phoneme... A phoneme is the smallest significant unit in language;
> thus, both 'a" and 'an' are phonemes, but 'n' is not."
>
> --Ross C. Murfin, "Glossary of Theoretical and Critical Terms," in
> Daniel R. Schwarz, ed. _Joseph Conrad: The Secret Sharer...with
> Biographical and Historical Contexts...and Essays from Five Contemporary
> critical Perspectives_ (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997), p. 264.
>
>
>
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