[lg policy] Iceland Volcano Spews Consonants and Vowels

[Kephart, Ronald]

On 4/17/10 3:01 PM, "Christina Paulston" <paulston at pitt.edu> wrote:

I don't think it becomes members of this list to ridicule others who
have not mastered a particular jargon.  Christina

Maybe, but if these folks are not willing to learn at least some of the jargon, what business do they have writing about language? And why shouldn't we call them on it?  If they're willing to publicly flaunt what amounts to their intellectual laziness, they should be willing to take the heat.

In fact, this is a serious problem in many areas of language-related  topics, such as, er, language planning and policy. Public officials, and others, imagine that because they can talk, that makes them experts on language. Look where that's gotten us with regard to literacy in language-minority populations, for example.

I think we need to be more vocal in calling attention to nonsense when we see it.

Ron
--
Ronald Kephart
Associate Professor of Anthropology
   and Linguistics
Coordinator, Anthropology Program
University of North Florida

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