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Free PDF The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time: Wit and Wisdom from the Popular "On Language" Column in The New York Times Magazine
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From Safire, America's most beloved pundit of the English language, comes a recent compendium of his On Language columns from The New York Times Magazine.
- Sales Rank: #765220 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Simon n Schuster
- Published on: 2004-06-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.35" h x 6.30" w x 9.18" l, 1.32 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 448 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
Safire has published more than a dozen, often bestselling, collections (No Uncertain Terms, etc.) of his acerbic weekly columns on the English language. In his crisply witty commentaries, he does more than elucidate the origins of slang or correct common grammatical mistakes: he alerts readers to the rhetorical maneuvers of our politicians and public figures as only a former speechwriter can. Bush's phrase "Leave no child behind," the atomic origins of "ground zero," the difference between "antiterrorism" and "counterterrorism," and Tony Blair's diplomatic use of a moveable modifier in an Israeli speech all occasion the use of Safire's talent for analyzing the speech of our decision makers. His gift for plucking examples of more general shifts in word usage from the most obscure news reports and for picking up on debates surrounding word use is unmatched. Several of his columns cross-examine Supreme Court wording, and this volume includes entertainingly vigilant ripostes to Safire from Justice Antonin Scalia. Safire is adept at rooting out literary influences and half-remembered poetic allusions, tracking the appearances of, for example, Lewis Carroll's delightful verb "galumph." Unfortunately, Safire's command of foreign languages is less than reliable, as he records Jacques Barzun and others pointing out. And he can veer into chauvinism (for instance, calling for the world to adopt American-style layout for the day's date). Yet the investigations gathered here, each in an unfailingly droll tone, will instruct and delight all readers who share Safire's love of language and its endless permutations.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Pulitzer Prize winner Safire is a prolific writer (with a total of 25 titles to his credit), and his latest book is his eighth one on language--no surprise there, since he has become one of the leading experts on proper usage. His home base is the New York Times Magazine, where he writes the weekly "On Language" column. This new compilation of recent columns demonstrates in both erudite and witty terms why so many readers fondly turn to him for edifying discussions about how English is currently being spoken and written--and, as he so often finds, not in the correct manner. His analyses of colloquialisms, Americanisms, brand-new meanings, and connotations of the hour are based on the way people express themselves, ranging from what politicians say to how television personalities talk to the ways just plain old you and I converse. There is a lot to think about here for the language lover, for there is much subtlety in Safire's examinations of word usage; for instance, one could be up all night reading and pondering his discussion of the difference between seasonable and seasonal. But, inarguably, there are certainly worse reasons to be up all night. Sure to be popular where his previous books on language have been requested. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
We will come to sodomy in a moment. To stagger together through today's column about grammatical possessiveness, you and I must agree on the difference between a gerund and a participle.
Take the word dancing. It starts out as a form of a verb: "Look, Ma, I'm dancing!" When that word is used as an adjective to modify a noun -- "look at that dancing bear!" -- it's called a participle.
But when the same word is used as a noun -- "I see the bear, and its dancing isn't so hot" -- then the word is classified as a gerund. (From the Latin gerundum, rooted in gerere, "to bear, to carry," because the gerund, though a noun, seems to bear the action of a verb.)
We give the same word these different names to tell us what it's doing and what its grammatical needs are. Two great grammarians had a titanic spat in the 1920s over the use of the possessive in this sentence: "Women having the vote reduces men's political power." H. W. Fowler derided what he called "the fused participle" as "grammatically indefensible" and said it should be "Women's having"; Otto Jespersen cited famous usages, urged dropping the possessive and called Fowler a "grammatical moralizer."
Comes now Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia with the latest manifestation of this struggle. An Associated Press account of his stinging dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, in which the Court struck down that state's anti-sodomy law, quoted Scalia out of context as writing, "I have nothing against homosexuals," which seemed condescending. His entire sentence, though, was not: "I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means."
Note the lack of apostrophes after homosexuals and group to indicate possession; Fowler would have condemned that as a "fused participle." Such loosey-goosey usage from the conservative Scalia, of all people?
"When I composed the passage in question," the justice informs me, "I pondered for some time whether I should be perfectly grammatical and write 'I have nothing against homosexuals', or any other group's, promoting their agenda,' etc. The object of the preposition 'against,' after all, is not 'homosexuals who are promoting,' but rather 'the promoting of (in the sense of by) homosexuals.'
"I have tried to be rigorously consistent in using the possessive before the participle," Scalia notes, "when it is the action, rather than the actor, that is the object of the verb or preposition (or, for that matter, the subject of the sentence)."
But what about his passage in Lawrence, in which he failed to follow Fowler and fused the participle?
"I concluded that because of the intervening phrase 'or any other group,' writing 'homosexuals' " -- with the apostrophe indicating possession -- "(and hence 'any other group's') would violate what is perhaps the first rule of English usage: that no construction should call attention to its own grammatical correctness. Finding no other formulation that could make the point in quite the way I wanted, I decided to be ungrammatical instead of pedantic."
But his attempt to be a regular guy backfired. In a jocular tone, Scalia observes: "God -- whom I believe to be a strict grammarian as well as an Englishman -- has punished me. The misquotation would have been more difficult to engineer had there been an apostrophe after 'homosexuals.' I am convinced that in this instance the AP has been (unwittingly, I am sure) the flagellum Dei to recall me from my populist, illiterate wandering. (You will note that I did not say 'from me wandering.')"
My does beat me before that gerund wandering. Robert Burchfield, editor of the third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, writes, "The possessive with gerund is on the retreat, but its use with proper names and personal nouns and pronouns persists in good writing."
Now let's parse Scalia's self-parsing. In his refusal to say "from me wandering," wandering is a gerund. When a personal pronoun comes in front of a gerund, the possessive form is called for: say my, not me. This avoidance of a fused participle makes sense: you say about the above-mentioned bear "I like his dancing," not "I like him dancing," because you want to stress not the bear but his action in prancing about.
In Scalia's dissent in the Texas sodomy case, promoting is a gerund, the object of the preposition against. His strict-construction alternative, using apostrophes to indicate possession -- "against homosexuals', or any other group's, promoting" -- is correct but clunky. He was right to avoid it, and is wrong to castigate himself for eschewing clunkiness.
There would have been another choice, however: put the gerund ahead of the possessors. Try this: "I have nothing against the promoting of their agenda by homosexuals, or by any other group, through normal democratic means." That would not only avoid the confusing apostrophes, but follows "I have nothing against" with its true object, the gerund promoting -- and would make it impossible for any reporter to pull out a condescending "I have nothing against homosexuals."
Regarding your proposed solution to my gerundial problem (to wit, "I have nothing against the promoting of their agenda by homosexuals, or by any other group, through normal democratic means"): It is so obvious that of course I considered it. Two problems. (1) I do not like to have a relative pronoun preceding its antecedent, as in "the promoting of their agenda by homosexuals." (2) More importantly, English remains a language in which emphasis is largely conveyed by word order, and the emphasis in my sentence was upon homosexuals' promoting, not upon (where your alternative places it) the promoting by homosexuals. Surely you can sense the difference.
Justice Antonin Scalia
Supreme Court of the United States
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2004 by The Cobbett Corporation
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Thoroughly Enjoyed It
By customer
It's hard to go wrong purchasing a book on language by Safire, and The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time: Wit and Wisdom from the Popular "On Language" Column in The New York Times Magazine was yet another satisfying experience.
Safire launches into his subject matter with a bold statement: "We will come to sodomy in a moment." Here he has the audacity to pretend that we are in the middle of a conversation about this emotionally/religiously/politically charged word, and now he expects us to wait around until he gets to his point. In the hands of a novice, this kind of opening could be a disaster. But, this is Safire. It's worth hearing what he has to say.
He goes on in the introductory essay to analyze supreme court justice Antonin Scalia's problematic statement: "I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means." He includes exchanges (correspondence?) with Scalia about the grammatical issues, and you get a real sense of two thinkers struggling to express themselves well.
The book contains numerous other words that caught Safire's eye, so it is more a record of words flying around the political realm, than a structured approach to the English language. It consists of many mini essays, and can be read straight through, or in random samplings. You may want to have a dictionary close by just in case. Safire possesses a powerful vocabulary, and he's not afraid to use it.
Although you may not agree with his politics, it's fascinating to see the English language come alive in his hands. I believe this was the last book he wrote before passing away in 2009.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Great read
By James W. Grieve
This is a terrific book by a terrific thinker and writer. It's full of obscure word history that never fails to interest. And the dictionary organization makes it pretty easy to find passages that you might be interested in using for reference at a later date.
8 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Not as dry as you would expect
By gsundar
I expected that this compilation of his columns on English usage and grammar would be another excercise in [overanalysis] of the language from an old, out-of-touch crank, similar to Buckley's masturbatory celebration of his own good English, "The Right Word" or George Will's angry, irrational screeds against Ebonics. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that this 85 year old off-the-docks Jewish Conservative who is best known for his cranky anti-liberal editorials, is really quite knowledgeable about current popular culture and its effect on the language.
The section on Hip-Hop/Rap Influence on the language is what interested me the most. Safire provides valuable insight into the nuances of "izzle"-talk, first popularized by hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg. He also presents a thorough analysis of the origins and meanings of Rap artists' names, reaching back to SugarHill Gang and covering rap artists all the way up to Nas. Did you know that Nas is not just an acronym for network attached storage? Me neither. How in the world would an artist come to choose "Nas" or "Snoop Doggie Dogg" or "Lil Bow Wow" for a name? Well, William Safire is just the man to answer that question. He is especially humorous when spoofing hip-hop terms which have been over-used into obsolescence , and yet linger on in the stunted vocabularies of deluded lay people who have no understanding of the culture and are always a year or 2 behind the times. The essays "Bye Bye Homegirl in Da House", "Yo Yo Yo..No No No", "Hold on to Yo MC Hammer CDs, Boyeeee" and "You Go Girlfreind. I Mean It, Go On, Get Out Of Here" were hilarious.
One major low point of the book was the overwrought study of Missy Eliot's "Get Yer Freak On". Safire expends nearly 2 pages dissecting Elliot's use of suburban subjunctive clauses and east coast participles to the point of absurdity. How he chose this particular selection to expound on is puzzling. Although "Get Yer Freak On" is undoubtedly one of the groundbreaking pieces of recent times, there are countless compositions by Eminem, NWA, Public Enemy, or even 2 Live Crew that are more deserving of such intense review.
Nonetheless, considering his advanced age and extreme conservative political leanings, it was indeed refreshing to discover that a crotchety old crank like Safire still got game.
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