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Myth, storytelling and modern writing

25 July 2011
Posted by Ian Chadwick in What I'm reading now, art, culture and reviews, Book & film reviews, Personal reminisence, Language use and abuse, Social values
Back in 1949, Joseph Campbell, a follower of Carl Jung, wrote a book called The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It traced the story of the 'hero's journey' through the world's mythology, showing how every major tale, regardless of culture, shared common elements and archetypes. It detailled 17 quintessential steps along the mythic...

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Tags: literature, novel, writing, mythology 1 Comments


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Contrived words and spelling

10 December 2010
Posted by Ian Chadwick in Social values, Language use and abuse
Contrived words generally make me queasy. Yes, I know English is a language in flux and neologisms come and go with annoying frequency. But when advertising and marketing companies get into the act and redesign the language for their own ends, the result is usually fatuous at best, and embarrassingly stupid at worst.

This post was sparked after I...

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Tags: English, bad spelling, metaplasmus, language 6 Comments


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A sappy Thoreau misquote becomes a viral meme online

14 November 2010
Posted by Ian Chadwick in Language use and abuse, Social values, technology
I came across a quote allegedly from Henry David Thoreau's work, Walden, today, and it bothered me that it rang false. The attributed quote was, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

Humbug. What Thoreau actually wrote in Walden was, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet...

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Tags: meme, culture, Thoreau 0 Comments


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The death of language, bureaucracy style

15 June 2010
Posted by Ian Chadwick in Social values, Language use and abuse
I've often lamented that the Internet may be the death of proper English. I may be wrong. It might be bureaucracy.

Monday, Collingwood Council had a letter in the consent agenda portion - the section for outside correspondence - of the regular agenda. It was from the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit (bizarrely under-capitalized as...

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Tags: English, abuse, grammar, language, usage, words 0 Comments


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