Word: dialectical
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Psychobabble, says Rosen, is the official dialect of the narcissistic cult of candor that is tyrannizing the culture. The language "is difficult to avoid and there is often an embarrassment involved in not using it, somewhat akin to the mild humiliation experienced by American tourists in Paris who cannot speak the native tongue." According to Rosen, self-help and sex books, instant therapies and self-improvement courses like est purvey psychobabble in pure form. The problem is not just that psychological ideas dominate national conversation, but that psychobabble is a deadened tongue with no words to express "the paradoxes...
Mcllvanney captures the speech of his Glaswegians with similarly high fidelity. At first glance, the dialect seems designed to try the reader's patience: "If there's no somethin' wrang wi' her the noo, there'll be somethin' wrang wi' her when Ah get ma haunds oan 'er." Gradually, though, the "hoot, mon" appearance of words on the page disappears, replaced by the odd, lilting music of street, sitting room...
...acceptance speech, the President surprised and delighted the crowd of 8,000 by beginning with a phrase in the local dialect: "Ha'way the lads," a popular cheer for the local soccer team. Said Callaghan afterward: "I don't know where you picked that up from, but I tell you that you couldn't find a way more quickly to the hearts of our people." Accepting his new privileges, Carter mentioned the name by which people of the region are known. "I'm glad to be a Geordie," he said -and the crowd roared...
Lalonde's point is valid. High school students in British Columbia generally learn the Parisian dialect of French which is noticeably different from the language spoken by Quebecers. Despite the federal government's investment of several million dollars in British Columbia, the teaching of French lacks continuity and is ineffectual...
Conceived by white men in the mid-1800s, minstrel shows evolved a format as rigid as a TV sitcom: performers, usually white, put on blackface makeup and offered up cakewalks, "coon songs" and darky-dialect jokes. Blackface survived until Al Jolson's mammy routines in the early 1900s, as proof that nobody found them offensive -nobody except black entertainers whose talents were suffocated by parody and caricature. Minstrel Man (CBS, Wednesday, March 2, 9 p.m. E.S.T.) provides a rare view of minstrelsy through the eyes of those victims...