A Periodical for Linguists?
August 8, 2012
What would a linguistics magazine look like? Back in 2007, Language Log’s Mark Liberman created a spoof cover of the hypothetical “Linguistics Today,” which he reproduces in his recent post, “Linguistics: the Magazine.” He shares two other parody covers for magazines that might be aimed at language nerds, Mignon Fogarty’s “Grammarian” and Jon McWhorter’s “Werd.” Lots of fun, but Liberman isn’t entirely kidding. He proposes:
“Jokes, parodies, and illustrations aside, I really do think that this is a good idea. A semi-ironic supermarket-magazine approach might work — especially for cover stories — but the most plausible core market, I think, would be more a upscale and intellectual one. In addition to those cover stories about the juicier aspects of interpersonal communication, there could be sections dealing with language variation and change, speech and language technology, literary analysis, political language, usage advice, language and gender, linguistic history, advertising language, forensic linguistics, scrabble, whatever . . .”
The write up mentions that the online publication option would probably be “easiest, cheapest, and sanest.” I, for one, would subscribe to such a publication, online or in print. Our burning questions: What system will be detailed in the Road&Track-style exploded diagram? And, more importantly, who will be the person featured in the foldout?
Cynthia Murrell, August 8, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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In a literature you need to analyse character means representation of a person, place, or thing performing traditionally human activities or functions in a work of fiction.