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Day: April 18, 2017

Why do my classmates like using my Chinese name instead of my English name?

By: | Post date: 2017-04-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, English, Linguistics

Two contrary reasons. In the particular context you’re detailing (them laughing), one is likelier; but both should be stated for others coming across this question. One tendency is mockery of the exotic; teenagers in particular have a strong, even brutally, conformist ethic, and they deride names that they find out of the ordinary. The contrary […]

Why did the post-structuralists ignore linguists such as Chomsky, who is far more important than Ferdinand de Saussure?

By: | Post date: 2017-04-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, General Language, Linguistics

I’m not convinced by Michael Minnich‘s account, which makes a French Swiss linguist a Teuton. But it is certainly true that poststructuralism, as a European invention, was always going to draw more inspiration from what was happening in the generation of the European linguists who had trained the first poststructuralists, than in what was happening […]