Language Log

I don't know, and I have no reason to care. But one of the more bizarre political stories of 2010 has been the series of Republican political operatives claiming to have had sexual relations with Nikki Haley, the leading Republican candidate for governor in South Carolina. (Haley denies the claims, and blames her political rivals for concocting the stories.)

I bring this up only because it's necessary background for a discussion of the second sex-related linguistic innovation to come out of South Carolina politics in the past year. The first, of course, was "hiking the Appalachian trail", which was one of the cover stories that the current S.C. governor, Mark Sanford, offered for a trip to Argentina to visit his mistress.

One of the first sites to flag that expression as an idiom-in-the-making was Talking Points Memo.  And in a recent post at TPM on the Nikki Haley story, Josh Marshall implicitly noted a gap in the word-stock of English, and proposed a way to fill it ("Somethin' in the Water Down There", TPM 6/2/2010):

I'm not sure which would make for a more colorful and entertaining story: Haley exposed as an inveterate … what I guess you'd call, man-izer or the idea that a series of different GOP operatives, each of whom is currently married, conspiring to publicly allege phony affairs with Haley. What say you?

Derrick Bird, a divorced man living with his mother in a small town in northwest England, was said to have been having a row with his brother about a will, and had mentioned to his workmates that he was worried about a possible $100,000 tax bill or even a jail sentence for tax evasion. His workmates teased him about being a loser with women. Then the day came when he told a friend darkly, "You won't be seeing me again". He said his last words to fellow taxi drivers: "There's going to be a rampage tomorrow." And although they knew Mr Bird owned a collection of guns, his friends and workmates did nothing about what he said. They told no one. The next day he shot and killed his twin brother, and the family solicitor, and two of his fellow cabbies, and then drove around several small towns for three hours shooting people at random. He killed eight more innocent strangers: a realtor, a farmer, a retired couple, a mole catcher, a woman shopping, an unmarried senior citizen delivering leaflets, a couple of retired workers… He wounded a dozen more. Blood ran in the streets of tiny rural towns where everyone knew everyone. Finally he drove to some woodland and (you can feel the usual journalistic cliché coming up) he turned the gun on himself. He had actually used the stock word rampage in his warning to his workmates; but they didn't listen, and didn't tell the police. We should pay much closer attention to the words people actually use.

It's been widely reported that the Arizona Department of Education has begun working to remove teachers whose English-language skills are viewed as inadequate. According to press reports, the evaluators aim (among other things) to remove teachers with "accents", which probably means Spanish accents in most cases. Casey Stegall, "Arizona Seeks to Reassign Heavily Accented Teachers", Fox News 5/22/2010, wrote:

After passing the nation's toughest state immigration enforcement law, Arizona's school officials are now cracking down on teachers with heavy accents.

The Arizona Department of Education is sending evaluators to audit teachers and their English speaking skills to make sure districts are complying with state and federal laws.

Teachers who are not fluent in English, who make grammatical errors while speaking or who have heavy accents will be temporarily reassigned.

"As you expect science teachers to know science, math teachers to know math, you expect a teacher who is teaching the kids English to know English," said Tom Home, state superintendent of public instruction.

If you read German or Dutch, you may be interested in the recent spate of articles about the newly-compiled Cow/German Dictionary.  I'll wait to comment until after the BBC has scrutinized the story.

No, really, I'll wait until after today's meetings are over, and I've caught up with a few chores after taking the red-eye home last night from Albuquerque via Phoenix. Anyhow, I'm guessing that the dictionary's author, Gerhard Jahns, didn't get a press release into the channels that the BBC reprints…

In fact, Dr. Jahns' research seems to be a serious and long-established project that has reached a new stage, rather than the cheese-company PR stunt behind the BBC's previous cowlingual scoop. At an earlier stage, Jahns' work got extensive coverage back in 2002.

Greg Laden has recently posted an entertaining screed, "Minifalsehood: We can't tell what a word is!?!?", 5/31/2010. I don't have time this morning for a a serious discussion, but I can point to some relevant stuff here, here, here, here, here, here, …