For too long people who care about language have allowed themselves to be represented as authoritarian monsters wanting to impose their views on everyone else. Some do and they will fail. Many more are just worried about the way things are going and would like to feel their voices are being heard. They want to be able to engage in the argument and try to have some influence in the battle over usage.

That’s John Humphreys in Lost for Words (2004).

Humphreys’ subtitle: ‘the Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language’. It’s the manipulating that I’d like to hamper, however minutely.

Carol Atherton at NATE, the UK’s National Association for the Teaching of English, didn’t like Humphrys’ book much. . She says, with justice, that the effect of the book after a while is like being locked up with a grumpy old man. She calls Humphrys an ‘amateur’ albeit a ‘permitted amateur’. It’s clear she wouldn’t renew his permit. She likes the ‘professionals’ – linguistics people like David Crystal – who reject the idea of better and worse usage. So you’d only offer a class ‘excerpts’ – or does she mean ’specimens’?

Look 5B a prescriptivist.

Oo-er Miss.

And just look at the the metaphors of filth and disorder that he uses to describe the current state of the language‘.

That’s us Miss, innit?

How could we mobilise other discourses to recontextualise Humphreys?

Fascist!

More than time to put ‘fierce’ to rest, unless it means fierce as in tiger. Within three pages of Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise we hear about Janacek’s ‘fierce work ethic’ and Bartok’s ‘fierce technique’. Snow Falling on Cedars is “fiercely intelligent” according to The Times.

A technique for Bartok might be called fierce, and writers can turn nasty if not properly fed. But ‘fiercely intelligent’ usually means nothing more than ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ intelligent. In a levelling age, reviewers mustn’t be caught praising mere intelligence or judging its degrees.

We still need ‘fiercely independent’ however to describe a person who is brave and proud as well as vehement. (All three possibilities are in SOED.)

There’s a chorus of complaint about boffin-muzzling on the ABC’s own site. Should have noted this in my first post.

The boffins have been ordered to get their press releases cleared by the Prime Minister’s office. On the AM program this morning, the ABC’s Peta Donald put the obvious question to Mark Paterson, Secretary of the Department of Innovation Industry Science and Research.

PETA DONALD: For example, shouldn’t the CSIRO be able to say whatever it likes about climate change without having to have that vetted by the Prime Minister’s office.
MARK PATERSON: Well, it doesn’t need to be vetted. And there’s no suggestion in the language that was used or any language that I’ve used to suggest that something was being vetted.

It