LPGA to golfers: speak English or get off the tour

Dennis Baron debaron at ILLINOIS.EDU
Fri Aug 29 05:11:15 UTC 2008


There's a new post on the Web of Language: LPGA to golfers: speak
English or get off the tour

The LPGA is going English-only. Following the lead of the Salvation
Army, St. Anne Catholic School, and Geno's Steaks, the Ladies
Professional Golf Association has made English its official language.
Not only that, the association told the Korean golfers on the tour
that even if they're winning tournaments, they'll have to start
speaking English by 2009 or face suspension.

The LPGA defended its new rule by arguing that golf is entertainment
as well as sport. It further insisted that amateurs playing with the
Korean pros in U.S. pro-am tournaments were not amused when their
partners couldn't sufficiently entertain them in English.

While requiring golfers to speak English feeds into the ongoing mania
for declaring English official everywhere Americans gather, golf
itself originated not in the U.S. but in Scotland, in the 15th
century. The sport, or entertainment, if you prefer, didn't become
popular in England for another 150 years, and it didn't cross the
Atlantic until the 1780s, when Scottish merchants set up the first
course in Charleston, South Carolina.

Presumably women were excluded from the South Carolina Golf Club, as
this first golf course was known, along with Africans and the
occasional Jew or Catholic who might turn up, regardless of whether or
not they brought their own clubs, or their willingness to entertain
the members. . . .

read the rest on the Web of Language
____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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