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Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Groundbreaking linguistics research to change anthropology forever
For all you linguists out there, billmon from the Whiskey Bar describes an exotic language, Journalish, and one its variants known as Newspaperese. The findings will undoubtedly rock the world of anthropological linguistics and may even cause Noam Chomsky to exhibit a human emotion:
The crudest dialects (such as Cablenewsian) consist of little more than simian grunts and howls, accompanied by hand and facial gestures so simple and obvious that even total morons (as well as some CNN anchors) can understand them.
But the written version of Journalish -- Newspaperese -- isn't always that easy. While still primitive compared to standard English, Newspaperese texts can be very hard to decode. Anthropologists attribute this to the dominant social norms of most Journalish tribes: extreme deference to authority, an almost pathological fear of being shunned, and a deep aversion to acknowledging unpleasant facts that might cause the tribal chiefs to lose face.
Posted by Will at August 2, 2005 06:55 PM in Anthropology