freezeframe
Key Member
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2011
- Member Type
- Academic
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- Canada
- Current Location
- Canada
Excellent and amusing New York Times review of You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity by Robert Lane Greene.
Excerpt from the review:
Two thumbs up for "going to hell in a Hupmobile" :up::up:
I think I'm going to read the book now.
Excerpt from the review:
Greene’s abhorrence of linguistic meddling extends to the “grouches,” “scolds” and “vigilantes” who complain that English is going to hell in a Hupmobile and insist on imposing specious rules and crotchets on a language that is doing quite nicely on its own, thank you. In fact, he argues that the quality of this “declinism” has itself gone downhill over the last century. We’ve passed from the thoughtful homilies of Fowler to the pithy dictums of Strunk and White to the operatic curmudgeonry of modern sticklers like Lynne Truss, whose gasps of horror at the sight of a misplaced apostrophe are a campy cover for self-congratulation.
Two thumbs up for "going to hell in a Hupmobile" :up::up:
I think I'm going to read the book now.