Tuesday, September 21, 2010

RAJESH SEHGAL: HIS LANGUAGE IS WITHOUT MEANING

This is my point, Turnoi. If anyone cared to look carefully, one can see salaries of RMB26000 for teachers who haven't half ...nay, a tenth of my teaching experience, my knowledge of my language and my ability to excite students in the art of communications. There is a good article in yesterday's Washington Post: Goodbye to English [or words to that effect]. The author laments the death of English in America. Horray! Most of my fellow teachers who emanate from the US have language problems. They know very little of structural English. My fellow Aussies are the same: frankly, quite hopeless. They can't parse a sentence, let alone know what a sentence is. Very few have read any of the standard literature texts; they excel in contemporary street-speak, and this is not conducive to an understanding of our language and how to excite others with language. I wrote a book using street language as direct speech and I was criticised academically for the 'gutter atmosphere' I created. My point again is that I know street talk, but I also know that without structure and definition, language becomes meaningless [literally]. I gather then, if language has become meaningless, that when Rajesh Sehgal tells me something, he is telling me something altogether different from what I believe he is saying or was saying.

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