[ExI] book

[William Flynn Wallace]

Greene attacks prescriptivists.  He distinguishes between formal and
everyday writing and speaking and attacks the prescriptivists for teaching
that the formal way is the only way.  IOW - 'whom' every time, never 'who'
- and teaching blacks and others who use nonstandard English that they are
wrong rather than different - and more

bill w

bill w

On Sat, Jul 6, 2019 at 8:50 PM Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:

> All or almost all books on linguistics I’ve read — popular level works by
> John McWhorter, Stephen Pinker, and David Crystal and more technical works
> (which one would expect to be descriptive) — have been descriptive. Even
> books I’ve read focusing on grammar that aim to improve language use —
> Richard Lanham’s _Style: An Anti-textbook_ and Virginia Tigre’s book come
> to mind — tend to go against the stereotype of a dry commandment style
> rules. I’m just wonder who Lane Greene is attacking here.
>
> Of course, there’s nothing writing per se with prescriptive grammar,
> especially if the goal is, say, to better communicate or to signal one’s
> seriousness (or silliness), etc. But I’m guessing Greene is speaking out
> against the dryer Procrustean grammarians... But there’s already been two
> generations or more of folks speaking out against them — folks like
> McWhorter, for instance. What does Greene bring to the table that’s not
> covered by them?
>
> In other news, I read _Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We
> Need It_ by James Geary... So so. He gives some tantalizing details about
> the history and science of wit (on the latter I mean cognitive science and
> neurology stuff), but it’s fairly thin and doesn’t go deep enough. On the
> plus side, there are some great lines, stories, and jokes. Of course, I’m
> always down for a good pun.
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>    Sample my Kindle books at:
>
> http://author.to/DanUst
>
> On Jul 6, 2019, at 5:44 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Talk on the Wild Side, by Lane Greene, an editor at The Economist.
>
> It's not your 'where do you put the comma' type of book, though it does
> spend some time on 'whom' that might surprise you (including advice like
> "Don't use 'whom' in a biker bar").  Though it would not work at all as a
> text book, I learned a great deal from it.  Lots of good, common sense.
>
> There is a lot of trash-talking, names included.  Sections on artificial
> intelligence, several pages on Trump, a theory of bilingual education and a
> lot more.
>
> I have not read anything like it, out of all the books I have read on
> language.  It's mainly on the descriptive as opposed to prescriptive
> variety of linguistics, with lots of attacks on the latter, none polite.
>
> Don't miss it if you can!
>
> bill w
>
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