Acocella piece in The New Yorker

[Johanna Rubba]

Joan Acocella has a review of Henry Hitchings' "The Language Wars" in  
this week's New Yorker. It stinks. Real bad. She can't tell the  
difference between prescriptive and descriptive rules. She accuses  
Hitchings of making illogical arguments and then makes several of her  
own (accepting language change is tantamount to going back to the  
dentistry of Samuel Johnson's time???) She equates vernacular  
languages with slang. I've rarely seen anything this bad in the NYer.

I sent in a response letter.

Jo


Dr. Johanna Rubba, Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
Tel. 805.756.2184
Dept. Tel 805.756.2596
E-mail:  jrubba at calpoly.edu
URL: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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"Justice is what love looks like in public."
- Cornel West