1. “Back in Macdonald’s era, it was still just possible to think of the English language as a single great stream with its sources in literary tradition, rolling majestically past the evanescent slang and jargon scattered on its banks. That was a glorious fiction even then. But it isn’t a credible picture when all the old distinctions have been effaced — between high and low, formal and casual, print and oral, public and private.”

    — 

    —Geoff Nunberg On The Significance Of Language Wars : NPR

    If we’re talking about Webster’s Third dictionary (and we are—there’s a new book out about it, David Skinner’s The Story of Ain’t) then we must also be talking about Dwight Macdonald’s skewering of it, “The String Untuned,” collected in Masscult and Midcult.

    On the same topic, have a listen to this interview with Skinner at Slate’s delightful* language podcast, Lexicon Valley.

    *Any program Bob Garfield hosts is automatically delightful.

Notes

  1. nyrbclassics posted this