¹ I thought including a footnote to illustrate DFW’s writing style would cross the border into parody, but I couldn’t help it when I discovered, upon checking to make sure “idiolect” really meant what I thought it did, that one of Wordnik’s usage examples is a reference to DFW’s own.

Professor Shuy, a linguistics researcher, here takes up President Bush’s much-noticed slip during his State of the Union address, referring to to the Democrats as the “Democrat Party.” Nearly anyone who follows American politics recognizes the pejorative connotation that term carries in political debate, so many in the media were caught off-guard that the President would squeeze such a jibe into such a major speech.

As a fairly passive observer of Washington’s daily grind, I wasn’t surprised to see that Bush tried to wiggle his way out of questions about his word choice Monday on NPR. “I’m not that good at pronouncing words anyway,” the president demurred. Well, he’s got me there, I thought. I pretty much expected that would be the end of it.

Of course, that’s only because I am not a crafty linguist. Roger Shuys, on the other hand, would have none of Bush’s linguification. He took the president at his word, and looked at other instances of the “-ic” phoneme in his address.

economic reformpublic schools

basic private health insurance plan

basic health care insurance

domestic oil production

Strategic Petroleum Research

Atlantic Ocean

public servants

horrific scale

democratic legislature (of Afghanistan)

democratic constitution (of Afghanistan)

tragic escalation

democratic Iraq

diplomatic strategy

democratic Palestine

Each one pronounced as good as a Connecticut yankee, of course. After running the same test on Bush’s speech patterns in an earlier year, Shuy pokes a conclusive hole in the president’s excuse.

I’ll add another favorite experience to my earlier statement: I love seeing (and I use Harry Frankfurt’s exacting definition here) bullshit called for bullshit. It’s even more heartening to see a tight argument constructed that throws that bullshit out the window. If the whole thing is written so well that I can find it after a ten-hour day and unwind while reading it, well, that’s a feat. If only the world had a few more champion callers-out like Roger Shuy, I might have a lot more good reads.

Bus Plunge Kills 37 Sikhs

NEW DELHI, Sept. 18 (Reuters)—At least 37 Sikh pilgrims were killed when a passenger bus fell into a ravine at the foot of the Himalayas, it was reported today.

The story, centering on bus plunge and other “stock” stories’ role in plugging gaps in the physical newshole, tickled my abiding interest in typography. I had to do a double-take, though, when I read this passage:

“Solving layout problems with shorts meant newspapers often ran pieces because they fit, not because they burst with ‘news value.’ How random was the selection of Times shorts? The page from March 6, 1959, featuring the ’15 Africans Die in Bus Plunge’ story quoted above also harbored six other [filler stories]: ‘Queen Sets African Visit,’ ‘Bourguiba Renamed Head,’ ‘Inquiry Costs Top 4 Million,’ ‘Buenos Aires Port Struck,’ ‘Greece Jails Former Nazi,’ and ‘Jakarta Accepts Soviet Aid.’ How many of those stories ran because they were news, and how many ran because makeup editors were working on a jigsaw puzzle against a deadline?”

If you’ve met me in real life, or you’ve been reading my blog for a little while, you’ll know that I’m working on my senior honors thesis, explaining why informal international agreements are sometimes legalized into formal treaties. I want to be quantitative about this, so I’m coding a sample of these informal agreements as the first step in the analysis. Since it’s hard to track down a representative group of all informal international bargains, I’m using a database.

This database is populated by stories about international agreements from the Times. Stories like “Jakarta Accepts Soviet Aid,” for instance.

I guess it’s not too late to include a proviso that the realities of the newspaper business prevent my sample from being truly representative, but these are the kinds of things I’m just not thinking about. I’ll be sure to show this to my thesis advisor, to say the least.

At any rate, the Slate story is a very good read. And it probably won’t screw up your last two months of work.

The Michigan Action Party is dedicated to effectuating positive change at the University of Michigan. As a student government party, we do this primarily through our candidates and members who serve on MSA and the LSA student government. We are committed to improving life on our campus and invite anyone and everyone to join us. [emphasis mine]

Between that and this, it’s gonna be a long election season…

Seriously, though, this is pretty much what I’d expected, (though I hoped they’d choose a snappier name). With Students 4 Michigan’s collapse and subsequent dissolution, the Michigan Action Party is on the scene just in time to serve as the vechicle for Zach Yost’s grab at the MSA presidency. Let’s see who’s in the group. Surprise! I give Ken Baker even odds for setting aside his convictions and joining up as vice president.

Really, though: best wishes to Zach & Co.. Happy effectuating!

“HOW IMPORTANT IS ONE VOTE?In 1776, one vote made English the official language in America instead of German.

In 1845, one vote brought Texas into the union.

In 1868, one vote saved President Andrew Johnson from impeachment.

In 1876, one vote gave Rutherford B. Hayes the Presidency of the United States.

In 1933, one vote gave Adolph Hitler leadership of the Nazi Party.

In 1941, one vote saved Selective Service – just weeks before Pearl Harbor was attacked.

YOUR VOTE IS YOUR VOICE!”

I’ll grant that Snopes, linked above, has done way more research on this issue than I have, and (as usual) their page makes for a fascinating read. I’ll just add that I’m not totally comfortable with a government source indicating that the government has an official language. Y’know?

We’re not a presumptuous group in Shiawassee County; I’m certain whoever put it up was simply misled. But when the first page of Google results is full of hits debunking the claim, is there really any excuse for reprinting this silly canard?

“On the day that George W. Bush took office, the words “tax relief” started appearing in White House communiqués. Think for a minute about the word relief. In order for there to be relief, there has to be a blameless, afflicted person with whom we identify and whose affliction has been imposed by some external cause. Relief is the taking away of the pain or harm, thanks to some reliever.”

“Framing the Dems”