Going Nuclear over Nucular

“Language bullying… advances a stuffy and old-fashioned view of language, the rules of which it considers set by supposed experts, such as the authors of grammar books, rather than common usage. It is deeply anti-populist and snobby, not to mention just plain wrong and cranky…. I suspect many of Bush’s critics would want to avoid the distasteful varieties of prescriptivism that amount to little more than ‘white speech good, black speech bad.’ But once we ‘go nuclear’ on ‘nucular,’ it’s hard to see how different we are from prescriptivists who sneer at the inventiveness of non-standard English. Lots of people other than Bush say ‘nucular.’ It even follows its own rhetorical logic…” Andy LameyGoing Nuclear over NucularNational Post)

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