"In ways that certain of us are uncomfortable about, SNOOTs' attitudes about contemporary usage resemble religious/political conservatives' attitudes about contemporary culture: We combine a missionary zeal and a near-neural faith in our beliefs' importance with a curmudgeonly hell-in a-handbasket despair at the way English is routinely manhandled and corrupted by supposedly educated people. The Evil is all around us: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers and bursts of voguish linguistic methane that make any SNOOT's cheek twitch and forehead darken. A fellow SNOOT I know likes to say that listening to most people's English feels like watching somebody use a Stradivarius to pound nails. We are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled at Everyone Else."
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AbsurdistsNovelists from the United StatesPeople from New York (state)Academics from the United StatesEssayists from the United States
Original Language: English
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Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage (Harper's Magazine, April 2001.)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace
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David Foster Wallace
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