[caption id="attachment_635" align="alignleft" width="219" caption="Strictly Speaking: Will America Be The Death Of English? By Edwin Newman"]
[/caption]Recently added to my mini-library is Strictly Speaking by Edwin Newman, which I bought last night at the Bookshop for P60.
Based on its introduction---the only part I managed to read so far---that a presidential spokesman opted to say he must be given enough time to make an "evaluation and judgment in terms of a response" than simply say "he'll think about it," is a commentary on the state of language. And the state of language is a commentary on the state of society.
"Language," Edwin Newman says, "is in decline." Does it mean society is in decline, too?
Newman says we have become a society when people say "at this point in time" instead of the more concise "now" or "today." Ours is a society where everything done "before" is done "prior to," and everything done "after" is done "subsequent to."
Newman's message, then as now, remains valid. It also hit close to home.
