Diagramming Sarah
Kitty Burns Florey,
Oct 07, 2008
We hear a lot about how students aren't learning to read or write. I would like to point to the sort of thing that causes this. There's this effort to understand the linguistic structure of a Sarah Palin sentence, above. Or this pointed diagram of her speaking style (language warning). Now it's one thing for a politician to present ideas so poorly. But then we also have the Wall Street Journal cheering her on and saying she nailed it. "She was the star. He was the second male lead, the good-natured best friend of the leading man... Debates are more active, more propelled-they are thrust and parry. They are for campaigners. She is a campaigner. Her syntax did not hold, but her magnetism did. At one point she literally winked at the nation." When this is touted as success by the nation's leading business journal, when this and not organized sentences or truth are touted as being of the highest value, then not only the nation's business sector bankrupt, its premise of fundamental literacy is under siege by the cynical and the manipulative.
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