Do you think anyone at Arts and Letters Daily actually reads the papers they link to?

This article on language bullies from the National Post (bad sign already) seems to endorse the following argument.

1. English contains negative polarity items.

2. If English contains negative polarity items, then we are in no position to complain about the use of embedded negations in anyone’s idiolect.

3. If we are in no position to complain about the use of embedded negations in anyone’s idiolect, then we are in no position to complain about how Bush pronounces nuclear.

C. It’s noocluelarr Lisa, noocluelarr.

Good things about the argument. First, it’s valid, at least if the conclusion is interpreted liberally. Second, premise 1 is true. (Both features have been somewhat unfairly enhanced in the reprodiction.) Bad things about the argument. Everything else.

The closest we get to a direct defence of noocluelarr is that it is meant to be on a par with how particular is really pronounced. But I don’t hear see a vowel between the c and l in nuclear.

For a better discussion of these pratfalls, I suspect the very discussion on which this little effort was based, see Geoff Nunberg’s Fresh Air discussion. And for a somewhat more sophisticated discussion of ‘black English’ than you’ll find in the National Post, see Geoff’s NLLT paper on ebonics. (Somewhat more sophisticated in the way Mont Blanc is somewhat larger than College Hill.)

It’s just too easy nowadays to get into far-right newspapers, and it seems Arts and Letters Daily, if you say anything attacking Bush critics.