No subject

[Dennis Baron]

this CNN report is such garbage -- thanks for pointing us to it, David
-- I'm going to use it in class it's so outrageous --

unfotunately, cnn doesn't even have a discuss or comment space.

how can anyone do this with a straight face? washington post tag
clouds are one thing -- at least there's the potential for humor there.

oh, and, forgive me for dignifying payack's comments with any kind of
analysis -- but reading level, bogus a category as it is because
people put too much faith in it as an absolute scale rather than one
of many possible ways of assessing prose, anyway, reading level  is
designed for written text, not speech analysis. that's why it's called
READING level, cause we READ it. what about that, cnn?

D

____________________
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

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On Oct 4, 2008, at 9:16 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Oct 4, 2008, at 3:42 AM, David Barnhart wrote:
>
>> I saw this this morning on Google News.
>>
>> http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/03/debate.words/?iref=mpstoryview
>
> oh lord.  this is the self-promoting Paul J.J. Payack, of whom we have
> written here and on Language Log.  no way to tell where he gets most
> of his figures.
>
> arnold
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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