I do remember when books used to say something

This is in response to nix_bresser's post remember when books used to say something?.

I agree that in some ways Chapter 2 was a little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing. Lakoff seems to enjoy talking about a concept or idea for a page and a half, and then moving on to (and I quote Monty Python here to prove to everyone what a nerd I am), "now for something completely different."

There are some vague themes (the way things are/status quo, "commonsense", women in language and society), but none of the chapter seems to be tied together in any solid and concrete way. It reminds me of a list of things that someone did on a specific day; there's some substance in each item, and a couple ideas are interesting, but it's disjointed and all over the place because going to class, arguing with a girlfriend, and grabbing a beer are all unrelated (unless you argued with your girlfriend during class about grabbing a beer). Likewise, what Whorf's theory has to do with animals being commonly referred to by their masculine variants, and what both have to do with Paula Jones being seen as dubious by the middle-class media, and what all of the above have to do with George Will is beyond me. (oh, I could dig up more seemingly unrelated examples from the chapter and throw them in, too, if I were that kind of spiteful...)

So I guess it boils down to a case of the Ramage syndrome, which is that too much information is given too rapidly, and is seemingly unrelated and at times superfluous. As was stated in the post that I'm responding to, the information in this chapter could've been summed up in a much shorter fashion. If the author had used an overriding idea as the central theme for the chapter (or, at least an overriding idea more focused than "The nuetrality of the status quo"), the chapter could've been 20 pages shorter and had more of an impact, in my opinion.

All that said, it still wasn't bad. Some interesting ideas and concepts, to be sure. Ah, well...

To reference, once again, the post I'm responding to, my word choice for Lakoff's chapter 2 is "longwinded." Oh, and "boring", too, but I guess I think that about anything that's not football, beer, or hairdye related. All right, I'll shut up.