LPGA to golfers: speak English or get off the tour

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language: LPGA to golfers: speak  
English or get off the tour

The LPGA is going English-only. Following the lead of the Salvation  
Army, St. Anne Catholic School, and Geno's Steaks, the Ladies  
Professional Golf Association has made English its official language.  
Not only that, the association told the Korean golfers on the tour  
that even if they're winning tournaments, they'll have to start  
speaking English by 2009 or face suspension.

The LPGA defended its new rule by arguing that golf is entertainment  
as well as sport. It further insisted that amateurs playing with the  
Korean pros in U.S. pro-am tournaments were not amused when their  
partners couldn't sufficiently entertain them in English.

While requiring golfers to speak English feeds into the ongoing mania  
for declaring English official everywhere Americans gather, golf  
itself originated not in the U.S. but in Scotland, in the 15th  
century. The sport, or entertainment, if you prefer, didn't become  
popular in England for another 150 years, and it didn't cross the  
Atlantic until the 1780s, when Scottish merchants set up the first  
course in Charleston, South Carolina.

Presumably women were excluded from the South Carolina Golf Club, as  
this first golf course was known, along with Africans and the  
occasional Jew or Catholic who might turn up, regardless of whether or  
not they brought their own clubs, or their willingness to entertain  
the members. . . .

read the rest on the Web of Language
____________________
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

read the Web of Language:
http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage







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