Cure for Bad Language

[Wilson Gray]

As the ancient Greeks are supposed to have said (can't remember where
or when I read this and it's never quite struck me as something the
Greeks would have said, true though it be), "*All* days are good, when
they're old."

-Wilson

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:40 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Cure for Bad Language
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Yeah, ISTR reading about that stuff but the implications didn't fully sink
> in. I think it may have been publicized during the Cummins Prison Farm
> expose' around 1970.  Maryland, of course, despite being North of D.C., was
> a slave state right to the end.  When (white) troops from Massachusetts
> marched through Baltimore at the beginning of the Civil War, a mob stoned
> them.
>
> Flogging was abolished in the U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine in 1850, but no=
> t
> till 1862 in the Army and Marines. Figure that one out!  Of course it was
> only for enlisted men.
> Almost as soon as the practice was gone, Congressmen were writing bills to
> have it reintroduced.
>
> Even in World War I, British soldiers could still be "crucified" on a wagon
> wheel for many hours for drunkenness.
>
> "The Good Old Days": there weren't any!!!
>
> JL
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 8:33 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Cure for Bad Language
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> ------
>>
>> OT comment. Apparently, not with enough horror, since scourging was
>> used in state prisons as far into the North as Maryland as late as the
>> 'Fifties, against black prisoners, at least. (It's amazing what can be
>> learned by merely browsing the stack [sic] of a library like Harvard's
>> Widener.) The photo showed a black prisoner stripped to the waist with
>> his hands tied above his head to the arms of a Y-shaped whipping post.
>> I didn't read the book, so I have no idea what constituted an offense
>> punishable by scourging or whether white prisoners were also subjected
>> to this in-the '50's?-in-the-US?-surely-you-jest! form of punishment.
>>
>> -Wilson
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Jonathan Lighter
>> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> > Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> > Subject:      Cure for Bad Language
>> >
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> ------
>> >
>> >  According to _The Whig Almanac_(N.Y.: Greeley & McElrath, 1850), p. 37=
> ,
>> > a U.S. Navy sailor could be punished with twelve strokes of the
>> > cat-o'-nine-tails for "improper language." This offense appears to have
>> > been distinct from "insolence," "mutinous language," "contempt," etc. H=
> ow
>> > often this punishment was meted out is not indicated, but the threat mu=
> st
>> > have been real enough.
>> >
>> > According to the editor, "There is no uniform scale of punishment, and
>> the
>> > descriptions of the offenses are not seldom indefinite; but no one can
>> read
>> > the volume [sc., the report of the Secretary of the Navy] without a
>> feeling
>> > of horror, and a deep sense of the imperfection of the whole scourging
>> > system."
>> >
>> > See:
>> >
>> >
>> http://books.google.com/books?id=3D0lowAAAAIAAJ&pg=3DPT518&dq=3D%22whig+a=
> lmanac%22+1848&lr=3D#v=3Dsnippet&q=3Dpunishments&f=3Dfalse
>> >
>> > (N.b., "language," not "grammar.")
>> >
>> > JL
>> > --
>> > "There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
>> > Platypus"
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -Wilson
>> =96=96=96
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"=96=96a strange complaint t=
> o
>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> =96Mark Twain
>>
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --=20
> "There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
> Platypus"
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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