Sunday, June 17, 2007

Profession names ...

Looks like language analysts, linguisticians, langlogists, language engineers, and language scientists aren't the only ones worried about the names for their profession. Jan Freeman's The Word today starts with a journalist declaring a preference for the term opinionator (that earns a chuckle, I hope) and declaring journalist 'pompous'. (The image here may support that view, but I'm not quite sure how.)

Just fyi: After that little set-up, the bulk of Freeman's column focuses on the subject of people declaring certain utterly normal pronunciations pompous, ugly or 'straight out of lower Slobbovia'.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I indeed had a chuckle at this, as I read the link before continuing to read your post. Opinionator is quite laughable if meant in earnest, which I suspect is the case here.

When completely irreputable 'journalists'¹ such as Bill O'Riley - or any such serf of Emperor Murdoch for that matter - start saying in all honesty, that they are balanced ('No spin zone'? Honestly, man.), then why should there be any connection between the meaning of a word and its use as a label?

So, she may as well call herself an opinionator, since, in reality, labels have become hollow.

¹Perhaps 'Opinionator would be better in this instance.

Mr. Verb said...

Gee, when you mention Murdoch, it suddenly seems like we don't have a problem at all, even fodder for kidding around — we're NEVER compared to anybody as bad as Fox News!

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