[lg policy] Good grammar leads to violence at Starbucks?

[Slavomír Čéplö]

Dennis,

I'm still at my first cup of coffee, so most of my brain doesn't work
yet, but the part that does has to wonder where the 'good grammar' /
'good English' part is. To quote Ms. Rosenthal: "I refused to say
'without butter or cheese. ... Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a
stickler for correct English." Is that all? And if, um, WTF?

Yours,

bulbul

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 04:07, Dennis Baron <debaron at illinois.edu> wrote:
> There;s a new post on the Web of Language: Good grammar leads to violence at
> Starbucks?
> Apparently an English professor was ejected from a Starbucks on Manhattan’s
> Upper West Side for—she claims—not deploying Starbucks mandatory
> corporate-speak. The story immediately lit up the internet, turning her into
> an instant celebrity. Just as Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant
> who couldn’t take it any more, became the heroic employee who finally bucked
> the system when he cursed out nasty passengers over the intercom and
> deployed the emergency slide to make his escape, Lynne  Rosenthal was the
> customer who cared so much about good English that she finally stood up to
> the coffee giant and got run off the premises by New York’s finest for her
> troubles. Well, at least that’s what she says happened.
>
> According to the New York Post, Rosenthal, who says she has an English Ph.
> D. from Columbia, ordered a multigrain bagel at Starbucks but “became
> enraged when the barista at the franchise” asked, "Do you want butter or
> cheese?" She continued, "I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.' When
> you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want.
> Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English." When
> she refused to answer, she claims that she was told, "You’re not going to
> get anything unless you say butter or cheese!" And then the cops came.
>
> read who did what to whom at the Web of Language: http://bit.ly/weblan
> ____________________
> 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://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron
> read the Web of Language:
> http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
>
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>
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