Re: (Slight) HUMOUR: Banned Words
Ah, but those with a "feel for language" are by my definition
Priests. Priests don't have to be grammatically proper; they just have to
have language skill of some kind. For instance, I would define some rappers
as Priests, though they sometimes garble the English language beyond (my
admittedly limited) recognition. I see rappers as engaged in a collective
word-coining frenzy, the results of which they have extensive knowledge. In
their milieu, they are Priests for me. The laity are those who find it
difficult to accomplish what they want with language: the illiterate, the
unintelligent, the involuntarily ignorant.
To flog the dying metaphor another staggering mile or so, I assumed your idea of Priests to have a connotation that you didn't intend. For me, the idea of Priests suggests people with more regard for the outward form than the essence. That is, I assumed them to be hard-core prescriptivists, or at least people who, by virtue of their education and training, imagine that they have a privileged relation to language and can control its development.
As you can tell from my article on prescriptive grammar on the Techwr-l site (plug, plug!), I think that these attitudes are extremely harmful to writing in general, and to tech-writing in particular. Basically, they distract from the basic task of communication by over-emphasizing aspects of writing that are only moderately important at best.
--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com
"The gates of hell are guarded by a pair of vicious dogs,
And Hannibal was thwarted by some flaming Roman hogs
Me, I was defeated by the ferry schedule
Now I'm standing on the dockside in twenty pounds of sopping wool."
-James Keelaghan, "Departure Bay"
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RE: (Slight) HUMOUR: Banned Words: From: APEERY
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