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Monthly Archives: July 2012
More fun less taxis
is an example of a slogan made up by protesters during the Tea Party movement last year. The slogans show great spelling and grammar creativity, as you will see when you watch Teabonics the Movie, which was sent to me … Continue reading
Attitudes survey: we need you!
So far, 589 people have filled in my Attitudes Survey, which is fantastic: thank you all! But I would like to have more responses, not because I’m greedy, but to make for greater representativeness of what people – not only … Continue reading
Resisting -ize
Christian Kay, in an article called “Issues for historical and regional corpora: first catch your word”, refers to “the resistance of British English writiers to using ‘-ize’ forms in words like ‘realise’” (in Archer, 2009:71). If you are a British … Continue reading
And nor – and neither?
He told me things you wouldn’t be able to get out of him in a million years, and nor would these priests, confession or no confession (P.D. James, Death in Holy Orders, 2001, Penguin [2002], 472) The use of and … Continue reading
Posted in usage features
Tagged and neither, and nor, Banville, English Studies, P.D. James, usage
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An Americanism in the 1960s? Why?
Now that the university library at Leiden subscribes to Cambridge Histories Online, it is possible to have access to books like the Cambridge History of the English Language without having to search for the book in the English Reading Room. … Continue reading
I was he
Your mother only had sex with one man in the whole of her life. I was he. I acknowledged my responsibility in a letter to your mother … (p. 443) These sentences are from the Inspector Dalgliesh novel Death in Holy … Continue reading
Raising critical language awareness
This August, we will be bridging the unbridgeable at the 17th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics in Zürich, Switzerland (click image to conference website). We will convene an informal meeting to discuss the public discourse on usage & normativism … Continue reading
Posted in announcement
Tagged communication, critical language awareness, ICEHL, ICEHL17, normativism, public discourse, usage
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Even I
My husband just started reading Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes (1911), and stumbled over the following sentence in the introduction to the 1985 Penguin edition: ‘There is the MS complete but uncorrected,’ Jessie wrote; ‘and his fierce refusal to let even I … Continue reading
Grammatical reinterpretation
Coming back from our summer holidays, I’m steadily working my way through the backlog of newspapers (primarily NRC Handelsblad). One of the things that stuck was something I read in a column by language historian and journalist Ewoud Sanders, from 25 June. … Continue reading
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