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Re: Bostonites. *ZAP*

From:charles <catty@...>
Date:Thursday, March 25, 1999, 18:57
Brian wrote:

> All cultures have a privileged form of speech, patterns and word choices > that are considered more elegant than others. All persons participate in > influencing these preferred speech patterns, and I have a right to have > preferences. If there were no preferred forms of speech, there would be no > languages. Prejudice is built in. That said, there are flexibilities in > preferred speech patterns. I have no problem with most of the recent fads > of speech. I just hate people making words longer to make them sound > smarter.
I hear you, and feel the same way; but pretentificatory forms do serve the purpose of demarkizing their invokees as what they are, and the alternative of not being able to plainly hear their pretensions is probably worse. Let the cats bell themselves. Maybe adding a haughty register to a conlang is a good idea ...