language of postings

[Eve Ng]

Hello,

Erika Strenski wrote:

> Why is there all this silly arguing about foreign language use?
> In fact it takes the guise of intellectual debate on the motivation of
those
> willing to invite non-English contributions.

I don't think we were arguing or making a pretence of an "intellectual
debate" as such, but rather, we were considering how those who would
like to post in a language other than English could be made to feel more
welcome to.

> It doesn't matter which language a posting is in as long as there is
enough
> info in the first couple of lines for us to find out whether we have
any
> chance of reading it.

I don't disagree; again, the issue was that some people on the list had
felt apologetic about posting something not in English, which was
possibly a feeling that they might have felt (and to my mind not been
justified in feeling) regardless of whether that information had been in
the post or not.

> we also share certain attitudes towards language and feminism,
otherwise we'd
> be on the 'lib dem labrador appreciation society' list.

Agreed, and again, I don't think those of us who expressed views on the
topic
were doubting this.


--Eve.


Eve Ng
Dept. of Linguistics
609 Baldy Hall, SUNY-Buffalo
Buffalo NY 14260-1030]
USA