Monday, February 13, 2012

Linguistics in the media ... a good day

Like most linguists, we've talked here about the relatively low public profile of linguistics (e.g. here) and the negative consequences of it … like the catastrophically bad language-related journalism that seems to pop up so often. Maybe there's some progress.

I was thinking that while reading Paul Krugman's column, which draws on the recent post on the Log about the collocations of severe, and Romney's comment about being a 'severely conservative'. (If you haven't read it, you should fix that.)

Then, boom, Ben Zimmer comes on NPR to talk about anachronisms in Downton Abbey.*

Good start to the week.


*NPR gets bonus points for opening with an Onion reference, this one.

2 comments:

The Ridger, FCD said...

I dunno, Downton Abbey isn't a documentary (what's the deal with that baby? Doesn't it ever grow?), and since I don't think I'd have the proper reaction to genuine pre-WWI British slang, I'm inclined to cut them some slack here. I think it's just because the period is so (relatively) recent that people get worked up about it. Nobody complains about the anachronisms in Robin Hood, do they?

Mr. Verb said...

Wait, what, there are anachronisms in Robin Hood? O.M.G.