Articles by Jerome Shea
Jerome Shea is an emeritus professor of English at the University of New Mexico, where he still teaches his classical tropes course every fall and his prose style course every spring. He has been the Weekend Wonk since January of 2007. His email is shea@macinstruct.com.
More Pun-ishment
March 2, 2008
Two questions linger from last week’s discussion of puns: namely, why puns are so often scorned as “the lowest form of humour” (whoever did say that, consensus seems to be that he was a Brit), and how puns are revelatory of deeper rhetorical mysteries. Well, let me and a couple of friends wrestle with those questions. I have a hunch, by the way, that the answers are connected. It is tempting, first of all, to see puns as going in and out of fashion through the ages and fashioning (there’s another polyptoton/ploce, friends) a theory out of that.
A Pun, My Word
February 23, 2008
Recently a friend sent me something that has been making the rounds on the Internet for years. It purports to be exchanges between pilots who note problems with their airplanes and the maintenance people who respond, later, below the pilot’s notation. In one case the pilot is supposed to have written “#3 engine missing,” and the mechanic has written below it: “#3 engine found on right wing after brief search.”
Equus Caballus
February 16, 2008
Who does not love horses? Magnificent animals, are they not? Often I come upon horsemen (and -women—usually women, in fact) when I am running in the Rio Grande bosque. We greet each other cordially and I step aside so they can pass. I usually find something nice to say, along the lines of “Handsome steed you have there, my friend.” But that’s about as far as it goes. If the truth be known, and this wonk will be a big bag of it, there is no love lost between Shea and equus caballus.
Ford Flathead II
February 9, 2008
I don’t remember much about that first semester at Colorado State, and maybe that’s for the best. It was a mixed bag, surely. I was on my own for the first time and pushing a barrow-load of insecurities. Too much partying, too much floundering and dithering. To be teaching for the first time was both a heady and a terrifying experience.* But somehow I got through it, and I made friends that I still have these long years later.
Ford Flathead I
February 2, 2008
I graduated from college in June, 1964, and in late August of that year I lit out for the West to enter the Masters Program in English at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.* I did my lighting out in a 1950 Ford, a black two-door sedan with a stick shift (“three in the tree”) and the legendary flathead (or “L-head”) V8 engine. First, a word about that engine. The Ford flathead is arguably the most famous engine ever produced in this country.
Anniversary Wonk
January 26, 2008
“You’re all entitled to my opinion.” Says here that my maiden Weekend Wonk column was posted on the 20th of January, 2007. But I didn’t want to break into my three-part wonk on language abuse which concluded last week, so with this marking of the milestone I am, to vary the old phrase, a week late and a dollar short. Still, I do want to mark the milestone, look back a bit, pay some debts, and, well, celebrate.
Language, One More Time
January 19, 2008
Prescriptivists are often seen as obsessives with too much time on their hands. But we are all prescriptivists, rule enforcers, to an extent. These are not grand, all-out battles that we fight, however. “Skirmish” might be a better word. I will give you “on accident” with as much grace as I can muster but will fight to the death to preserve the downfall/pitfall/drawback distinction. I will join in the derisive laughter about split infinitives, but will get exceedingly shirty if you misuse the semicolon and the conjunctive adverb.
On Accident
January 12, 2008
So the fruit of my loins protests that he broke the goldfish bowl “ON accident,” and I blanch, or pretend to. Does Dan’s new wording mean that something is going somewhere in a hand basket? I don’t think so, and that exposes our assumption that language change is always for the worse. Why is this so? Perhaps it’s part of the larger “good old days” phenomenon. People are naturally nostalgic. Everything was better “back in the day.
Whose Language Is It, Anyway?
January 5, 2008
A friend sends along an item from the Christian Science Monitor entitled “Reign in those vocal chords.” Uh oh. The English teacher in me feels at once very annoyed and very tired. And it is as bad as I expected. Turns out, the Oxford University Press, in regard to its dictionaries, has decided to accept as correct spellings which were once deemed incorrect in certain stock phrases. OUP will accept these solecisms “simply because a lot of people use them.
Cape Cod
December 29, 2007
I married well. I don’t mean just the Longsuffering Diana, that pearl beyond price. I mean the whole Dinsmore clan that she brought to the marriage with her. A wonderful dowry they have proven to be, generous and witty and convivial. I have known them for more than thirty years now and, like a good vintage, they only improve with age. By any measure I lucked out big time. And so we find ourselves here on Cape Cod—Falmouth, to be precise— this Christmas season and I find myself in my father-in-law’s study, working on this last wonk of the year.