First Spanish, then Chinese, says Nicholas Kristof

In this editorial, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof discusses the trend (mainly among hyper-competitive, status-aware parents) of enrolling children in Chinese (Mandarin) lessons. In terms of chic-ness, Chinese is apparently the new French. Although a fluent speaker of Chinese who commends the pursuit of taking up Mandarin, Kristof argues for the importance of learning Spanish first. Not only is it easier for English speakers to acquire, but Spanish is also increasingly important, as the U.S.'s hispanic population is steadily growing. There's also the whole matter of Latin America being our neighbor.

DFW Takes a Shot at Descriptivism in "Consider the Lobster"

Long time, no blog. Sorry to disappoint, viewers! (all < 5 of you). So, I recently bought the late David Foster Wallace's collection of essays cutely titled, "Consider the Lobster." In it, one chapter in particular caught my attention. Of course, it's about language -- "Authority and American Usage." Wallace critiques Bryan A. Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, but uses this as a jumping point to discuss prescriptivism (think rule-governed, so-called "correct" usage, as epitomized by William Safire and such) and descriptivism (the supposedly objective study of language and what most linguists ascribe to -- think Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker). While Wallace admits, unsurprisingly, to being a total usage snob, here he examines the positives and negatives of the two schools of thought. DFW's writing is lucid, but his hammering tangential* footnotes (*I say tangential with some reluctance; they're usually relevant, but I view his overuse of footnotes as a sign of weak writing rather than an adorable idiosyncrasy) often make it difficult to follow his points. Aside from that, I took issue with his positing that descriptivists fail to recognize the adaptive usefulness in adopting different discourse modes based on one's audience. Descriptivists do not overlook this occurrence nor do they deny its importance. In fact, they would argue that each individual of competent intelligence (that is, one who is at the very least "average" in intellectual ability) is fluent in at least one such discourse -- whether it's academic language, Black Vernacular, etc. -- and that adopting a certain discourse mode to fit a particular social domain is socially beneficial. However, unlike prescriptivists, they do not believe that ONE mode is correct or superior to another, but that a mode's "correctness" is relative depending on the social context. A hardcore prescriptivist, on the other hand, would argue that one mode (the highly-educated, usually white, male-dominated one) is always superior to others. So, sorry, DFW, but descriptivists do not have a vendetta against academic language and its usefulness. In describing language in its current, fluid state, descriptivists certainly observe and take note of discourse modes.