Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm:
Mother Goose objects to (what she sees as) an innovation in politeness routines, seeing it as recent (and characteristic of kids) and especially associated with serving people. These criticisms has been leveled by many others.
Posted in Formulaic language, Idioms, Linguistics in the comics, Politeness, Usage attitudes | 2 Comments »
John McWhorter, in the April 6th NYT Sunday Review, the piece ““Like, Degrading the Language? No Way”, in which John sounds a familiar theme for him, that novel usages and the change in old usages to new purposes and fresh sets of speakers is not decline, but shows an active drive towards greater expressiveness and nuance.
Posted in Language change, Politeness, Pragmatics | Leave a Comment »
Following up on my posting on “How are you?” (and the answer “(I’m) fine”): mail to the NYT. A response much like mine, but more detailed, from linguist Deborah Tannen, and another peeve about conventional idioms of social life. (more…)
Posted in Idioms, Politeness, Social life | Leave a Comment »
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