Sunday, July 11, 2010

Linguists DEBUNK: Does Obama Talk Like a Girl?

For shame, Atlantic Wire. You wildly mislead your readers with this ridiculous title: Linguists Debate: Does Obama Talk Like a Girl? This is flat wrong. Linguists ain't debating this at all. Linguists, as far as I can tell, are all in COMPLETE AGREEMENT on this topic. Obama does not talk like a girl. It's a ridiculous claim with ridiculous presuppositions and ridiculous implicatures. I don't know a single linguist who disagrees with or wishes to debate this at all.

The Atlantic Wire's roundup of the whole Parker-Krauthammer-Payack kerfluffle treats the delusional scribbles of political partisans on equal terms with the objective, thoughtful and empirically sound analysis of professionals. This is just wrong. For shame.

UPDATE: Just noticed that John Lawler makes exactly this point in the comments of The Atlantic Wire's page. Good for you John.

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TV Linguistics - Pronouncify.com and the fictional Princeton Linguistics department

 [reposted from 11/20/10] I spent Thursday night on a plane so I missed 30 Rock and the most linguistics oriented sit-com episode since ...