READINGS IN LANGUAGE

English usage scolds need to shut up or tone down, critic agrees

Three weeks back, the Forum presented a link to a book review in The Washington Post of Jack Lynch’s The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of ‘Proper’ English, From Shakespeare to ‘South Park’. In the review, Carolyn See described the book as a “delightful look at efforts through the centuries to define and control the English language (that) turns out to be a history of human exasperation, frustration and free-floating angst.”

In the January 1, 2010 issue of The New York Times, Neil Genzlinger, American playwright, editor, and theater and television critic, makes his own assessment of the book—this time from an editor’s standpoint. “It’s getting harder to make a living as an editor of the printed word, what with newspapers and other publications cutting staff,” Genzlinger says. “And it will be harder still now that Jack Lynch has published The Lexicographer’s Dilemma, [which] shows that many of the rules that editors and other grammatical zealots wave about like cudgels are arbitrary and destined to be swept aside as words and usage evolve.”

Even so, Genzlinger empathizes with Dr. Lynch’s view that the grammar scolds need to shut up, or at least tone it down. “Too often,” he quotes Lynch, “the mavens and pundits are talking through their hats. They’re guilty of turning superstitions into rules, and often their proclamations are nothing more than prejudice representing itself as principle.”

Read Neil Genzlinger’s review of The Lexicographer’s Dilemma in The New York Times

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