Richard W. Bailey
American linguist
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Perhaps we should not be too optimistic . . . about finding something never before imagined. But we should begin by looking. And the place to begin is not in the stolid center but at the vibrant edges of language -- among the bilingual, the flouters of convention, the daring, the young -- not at the middle of the road, where all the traffic flows, but on the verge, where boundaries form and shift.
—Richard W. Bailey, American linguist, "Language at the Edges" from American Speech, Winter 2000
Posted on July 14, 2000 at 11:24 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Schools ... are rich domains for nuanced linguistic adjustment, particularly with the huge numbers of immigrants adding to the mosaic of languages on the land. Malls are the souks of North America, as polyglot as Samarkand in the days of the caravans. Linguistic inquiry should begin in such places.
—Richard W. Bailey, American linguist, "Language at the Edges" from American Speech 75.4, Winter 2000
Posted on June 28, 2000 at 10:07 PM
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