I'm a bad student, aren't I?

Chapter 4 of the Lakoff book was, to me, one person's subjective reading of an event now 15 years old and a footnote to history. Lakoff got her shots in; on men in general, on the right wing, on specific senators, and others. Once in awhile, cause the book is apparently about language, she connected aspects of the trial ... er, hearing to something language related. There is much about politics and society and much less about language. Overall, since I find the the whole men vs women obsession of American society very, very uninteresting, I was sort of bored by this chapter. But alas, what can I do? (yeah, I did it, I typed "alas" without any irony).

I found the discussion of so-called tag questions interesting. I'm sure anyone who was a kid at some point (which I suspect is everyone) can remember being asked leading questions ("Rob, it was you who drew in that library book, wasn't it?") and having no way to get out of answering them. I often wondered why I was being asked questions that the adult obviously knew the answer to. Was it some form of control or punishment or humiliation? Yeah, it was me who shouted the obscenity in the lunch room, and everyone knows it. "Rob, isn't it true that you were the one who found it necessary to sceam the f-word?" seemed unnecessary to me. I guess the answer is that they wanted to see if I'd admit my misdeeds, and since I was a "reluctant interlocutor" being forced to give information out that would damage myself, tags were the best way to do it.

In a lot of little ways, language was used to discredit, intimidate, and incriminate Anita Hill, which is sort of lousy. Refusing to call her "Professor", giving her less time to pause, and asking questions that couldn't be answered "yes or no" all smack of impartiality. Still, it is Congress, after all, so should any of that be a surprise? The same sort of thing happened with the whole Clinton-Lewinski thing (see Chapter 8).

Well, I guess that's that. Boy, this is a crappy response, isn't it?