"Don't Say Gay"

[Ronald Butters]

I don't think that we can expect too much in the way of polished English from someone as apparently stupid as this speaker. (Isn't he also claiming the right to prevent schools from teaching that slavery was bad, global warming exists, and Hitler's ideologies were fundamentally wrong?) However, to be fair to this bigot, it seems reasonable to point out that what people say in speaking extemporarily may well contain solecisms that no one would notice who heard them (as opposed to seeing the transcript). We could also go back and find similar oddities in Eisenhower's press conferences, but I don't think we'd learn very much from it about what edited English is like, or what direction the language might be "going".


On Feb 17, 2012, at 7:40 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:

> OK, here's the quote again:
>
>> The basic right as an American is my right to life, my right to
>> liberty and my right to the pursuit of happiness. Within that includes
>> being able to run my home, raise my children as I see fit and to
>> indoctrinate them as I see fit.
>
> The first thing that pops out is that "right" is singular but the author
> goes on to describe a plurality of rights.  "That" is anaphoric to "right",
> and as Benjamin noted, "includes" is supposed to be "is included".
>
> The only other possibility that I can see is that the subject is elided
> (within that, the right includes...).  If this is the case, I can't think
> of any other verbs that could work here syntactically.
>
> Maybe Arnold will have more to say about this.
>
> Randy
>
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 1:07 PM, Randy Alexander
> <strangeguitars at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: "Don't Say Gay"
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> No, it's not a subject, amd yes, it's not so strange a construction.  I'll
>> try to elaborate when I get home (in a few hours).
>>
>> Randy
>>
>> Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM> wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: "Don't Say Gay"
>>
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> On Feb 16, 2012, at 8:30 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Feb 16, 2012, at 8:15 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> That's the name of the Tennessee bill that prohibits the discussion of
>>>>> any gay issues in schools prior to 9th grade. But this is not why I am
>>>>> forwarding this. John DeBerry (D-Memphis) made an argument in support
>> of
>>>>> the proposition:
>>>>>
>>>>>> The basic right as an American is my right to life, my right to
>>>>>> liberty and my right to the pursuit of happiness. Within that includes
>>>>>> being able to run my home, raise my children as I see fit and to
>>>>>> indoctrinate them as I see fit.
>>>>>
>>>>> What got my attention was the beginning of the second sentence, "within
>>>>> that includes..." that treats "within that" as a subject.
>>>>>
>>>>>   VS-)
>>>>
>>>> Interesting catch. And it sounds perfectly normal, evidence that
>> grammar is a construction fabricated from patterns in speech.
>>>
>>>
>>> BTW, this doesn't feel like "within that" is the subject.
>>>
>>> To me, it feels like "within that" is preposed as a topic and "includes"
>> somehow is "is included." I can't justify it, though.
>>>
>>> Benjamin Barrett
>>> Seattle, WA
>>>
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>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Xiamen, China
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>
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