October 28, 2007
Linguistics in the funny papers
In today's Sally Forth, we learn that America's 8-year-olds have been taught to Avoid Passive. (We'll see on my Linguistics 001 midterm tomorrow how many 18-year-olds have learned to identify passive-voice clauses accurately, so as to avoid them if they choose to so do.)
That single panel may be a little puzzling, so here's the context:
In other linguistics news from the Sunday paper, Doonesbury illustrates the extent to which George Lakoff has succeeded in making the concept of framing so much a part of everyday vocabulary that a popular comic strip can make it the basis of a pun, without having to set it up or explain it.
