Jose Carillo's Forum

READINGS IN LANGUAGE

This new section features links to interesting, instructive, or thought-provoking readings about the English language. The selections could be anywhere from light and humorous to serious and scholarly, and they range widely from the reading, writing, listening, and speaking disciplines to the teaching and learning of English.

Travails in internationally speaking English and other annoyances

Our readings about language this week look into three intriguing prospects: how to communicate when you live and work abroad; what to do with a class of utterances that could irritate and distress you and perhaps make you want to kill; and how to deal with the most annoying word in English.

In “Internationally Speaking,” an op-ed piece he wrote for the November 15, 2009 issue of The New York Times, William Chase, former creative director of McCann Erickson Europe, gives this advice to expatriate managers in a foreign land: “Adjust your speech to the language level of the people you are talking to. That may sound condescending, but it’s not — it’s simply putting yourself in the other person’s place.” And foremost among his guidelines is this: “Beware of idiomatic expressions…You may only have ballpark figures, or want someone to touch base, or think you’re in the home stretch. But try to say it in plain English.”

Read William Chase’s “Internationally Speaking” in The New York Times now!

Then, in “Can I Put You On Hold?”, a blog he wrote for the November 16, 2009 issue of The New York Times, law professor Stanley Fish at Florida International University in Miami ticks off some annoying English phrases that make him wince and say—if only to himself—“Oh, no!” He hates them, he explains, “because they derail expectation or because they offer condescension and prevarication in equal measure or because they accuse you of failures and weaknesses often before you’ve even had a chance to do anything.”

Read Stanley Fish’s “Can I Put You On Hold?” in The New York Times now!

Finally, in “‘Whatever’ most annoying word in English language,” a grammar piece he wrote for the November 15, 2009 issue of The Clarion-Ledger, Dr. Don R. Vaughan looks into a recent research finding that 47 percent of Americans find the word “whatever” the most annoying word in English. But why so? Vaughan says that it’s because when someone responds with “whatever,” that person seems to be saying that he is amenable to anything and will defer. But actually, he quotes Jesse Sheidlower, editor-at-large of the Oxford English Dictionary, “when a person says ‘whatever,’ he or she is saying ‘I don’t want to take any responsibility. You do all the deciding and then I’ll pass judgment.’”

Read Don Vaughan’s “‘Whatever’ most annoying word…” in The Clarion-Ledger now!

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