Loved your quote from Mr Rudd. A prize piece of neopolitical obscurantism (otherwise known as gobbledegook)!

John

A snippet on language use from Australia – in Germany recently, the PM Kevin Rudd said it was unlikely any progress would emerge from the Major Economies Forum “by way of detailed programmatic specificity”.

Ros,
Sydney, Australia

As to doubting that your blog is read, that is the feeling I get regarding my own efforts, that mostly attract search engines, my posts lost amongst the many thousands of hits each search turns up.

I certainly enjoyed your post, and will read more. Dr. Bibey’s blogroll is a great resource for me, and I suspect for others. Stay the course.

Dr. B

Not having seen a post from you in a while, I am hoping you’re well and otherwise happily occupied.

I’m about to captain a study of “Hamlet” in one class, having just completed “The Merchant of Venice” in another. I love the chance to study Shakespeare’s work with even the most reluctant students.

Best regards,

Charlie

This is Rose writing from http://www.huliq.com. I visited your blog and liked your content.

Would you be interested to send us a guest post on any of the issues related to the topics that you cover in your blog. We will publish it in our site http://www.huliq.com

In return with each guest blog we will give one link in the author’s biline back to your blog. We only ask that the guest post ( we prefer it be a news coverage, sources can be Google News, CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo News, BBC and others) be a unique story and not be published in your blog.

HULIQ is indexed by Google News and Google requires that the length of the unique news is at least 5 paragraphs. We desire it to be at least 6 paragraphs if possible. And that all need to be a unique content. Once you send us a new story totally unique we will immediately publish it with you link in it, and within 15 minutes it should be indexed by Google News.

Please let me know if you may have any questions about http://www.huliq.com.

If you want to consult the topic with me first that’s perfectly fine as well.

Many thanks

A very happy New Year to you, too!

Thanks for your comment – I enjoyed the humour (or, sorry, humor) of it; but I fear I did not make my intention clear in my original post. I was not suggesting that “The media is to blame” should be changed to “The medium is to blame” – which, while grammatically correct, could, as you say, lead to many confusions. My point was that “media”, in the context we are discussing, is always a plural, deliberately intended to embrace all the many methods of communication, and should therefore take a plural verb – i.e. the sentence should be: “The media are to blame”.

I quite like the idea of an authority to rule on ‘correct’ language (they have one in France), but I fear it would be doomed to fail; there are just too many influences changing and shaping the language, and those of us who care about correctness are, I fear, a dying breed.

I’ve been thinking about this more than I should admit and have come to the conclusion that, while your assertion of the overuse of the word media has merit, the wide use of the word medium complicates it much further. As is often the case, the English language seems to complicate communication as temporal and geographical demands require, and the word medium seems not to be immune.

Using your example “the media is to blame” (and I heard it incessantly during the 2008 presidential election here in the states–especially from those whiners, the republicans who would be using it in the plural, inclusive sense), I wonder if “the medium is to blame” would confuse things further–the following come to mind:

“The medium is to blame–I should have bought large briefs and now my midrif aches constantly.”

“The medium is to blame–I never should have tried to contact my great aunt this way, she always was insufferable.”

“The medium is to blame–I never should have used glue in that chemistry experiment.”

“The medium is to blame–once again our ambassador to Chile has displayed his ignorance of the Spanish language.”

Unfortunately, our various use of the word medium has rendered the use of media, whether as singular or plural, as a more reasonable alternative to the use of medium as it relates to modes of communication. We know what is meant by ‘media,’ and can deduce through context whether singular or plural is implied. ‘Medium’ has too many alternative definitions and use of the word as a singular mode of communication has lapsed in use to the point that it may be too late to reinstate its use.

Maybe a commission to monitor future use of English should be established to provide some equilibrium and avoid additional lapses. (I’m half-serious, but share your consternation with this crazy language)

Happy New Year to you!!