Christopher Pearson tells Rudd to throw it all away, and can’t resist channeling his inner wanker.
Meanwhile, there have been a few straws in the wind about the way the dream team see their roles. Apart from Rudd’s promise that “I’ll be making the calls”, the most suggestive was Gillard’s comment on the surge in support for Labor in the opinion polls: “We have got a long way to go to ensure that the Australian community knows Kevin and I, trusts Kevin and I and wants us to be the prime minister and deputy prime minister of this country.” It shows she can’t tell the difference between the subject and the object of a sentence; when to use I and me. It also sounds like over-eagerness to take half the credit for Labor’s improving fortunes.
Glen “Meds” Milne understands what Christopher Pearson does not. You go with the horse that brung ya.
The other pledge Rudd made was to be “an alternative not an echo”. So far there’s been more echo than alternative. The phrase was first used by US presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 and was based on a book that attacked his party for not standing up for its values. Goldwater lost in a landslide when voters took the other fork in the road.
Alan Ramsey earns his pay for a change and gives Fairfax a twofer with thoughts on limp platitudes and cold showers. Indeed.
A confronting piece of humour was doing the rounds by email this week. Entitled “The Getting of Wisdom”, it showed ex-president George Bush snr saying to his son, President George Bush jnr: “Son, you’re making the same mistake with Iraq as I made with your mother. I didn’t pull out in time.” Nothing else need be said.
In a guest op-ed Liz Curran writes about underlying racism in Australia. I know, I know, there isn’t any.
But what deeply affected me, as a white person and a human being, was what occurred in the course of my travels with the two indigenous men. As I travelled, in my car behind theirs across Victoria, they were pulled over repeatedly by police who wanted to check their licences and car ownership. As we walked into the store to purchase a towel, we were followed by security. I had never had this happen before. We were refused service in country take-away food stores. On one occasion, after a moving interview, we needed a beer and a debrief. As I went up to the bar to order three beers the patrons at the bar sneered and shouted, “nigger lover”.
Out west, Andrew Probyn op-heads on multiculturalism integration and proclaims multicult alive and well. How about we save this baby by calling the PM Rumpelstiltskin?
The Labor Party has also begun marginalising multiculturalism, with Tony Burke now the “immigration, integration and citizenship� spokesman. Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd has hived off multicultural affairs as a separate entity to low-profile Labor frontbencher Laurie Ferguson. When Mr Howard announces his Cabinet reshuffle sometime in the next few weeks it’s a fair bet that multicultural affairs will get dropped from the immigration portfolio altogether. What neither side seems willing to admit is why we are at this juncture.
Akerman has a go at Labor and immigration and suggests the Liberals are the real immigration professionals. But of course.
Anyone wanting to outflank that performance should head for the boundary now and keep riding, riding and riding, for the reality is that when Labor was in government it rorted immigration to provide voters it could lock in as supporters.
Miranda Devine finds it hard to understand why you can’t paint lipstick on a pig.
In an interview in his 10th floor Parliament House office on Friday, with his newest minder, John Howard’s election guru, Scott Morrison, by his side, Debnam gave a glimpse of his battle plan for the election that will engulf the first quarter of 2007 – the most important NSW election in a decade. He needs a herculean swing of 10 per cent to win.
Thundering idiot Andrew Bolt has nothing much to say despite seven posts today. Must have exhausted himself after spending a whole week defending an evil dictator……
Re Pearson, seems to me that’s a classic right-wing arguing technique, you know, pick apart the grammar. It’s just not possible, in off the cuff speech, to be grammatically correct unless … one … speaks … like … this … in … which … case … your … sound … bites … don’t …. get ……. on ………… the news.
I thought the funniest thing about Devine’s column was that she was forced to say Premier Iemma is likeable. Of course he is. Especially if you put him next to Debnam who is so … creepy wierd.
Thank you Phil, for saving me the trouble of reading Ramsey, Pearson and Akerman. I used to love Ramsey, but he’s gotten a bit curmudgeonly lately. Pearson and Akerman are just unbearable.
Weird I know, but has anyone noticed how much they resemble each other?
Sorry, Lynn, but I just have to ask: how exactly is correct grammar right-wing? I am a Gillard fan and a card-carrying lefty from a long way back, and I too cringed at that ‘Kevin and I’ in Gillard’s speech. Is the corollary that bad grammar is left-wing, and therefore good?
I should add that I think Pearson made a bad statistical blue in pointing Gillard’s error out, though; he will just get most people offside, which will have exactly the opposite effect from the one he was trying to create. He has never managed to learn that nobody loves a smartarse.
I meant ‘tactical blue’. I have no idea where ’statistical’ came from.
Pearson is fatter while Akerman is uglier.
Channeling my own inner wanker, an entity not substantially different and indeed indistinguishable from my outer wanker, I’d also like to point out that there is a grammatical error in Pearson’s own piece, viz. ‘the way the dream team see their roles’.
‘Team’ is a singular noun and therefore can’t subsequently be referred to in the same sentence by the plural pronoun ‘their’.
Me is not right wing. Neither should yous guys be.
I must confess, like Dr Cat, I am a pedant when it comes to sentences like “she gave a present to he and I”, but I also agree Pearson made himself look like a pompous twit.
Oh, I don’t think it’s online, but silliest op/ed of the weekend honours should go to Dr Donnelly. I’d have thought he’d be more suitable to the grammar beat, but his column on how Rudd IS REALLY A SOCIALIST was just stunningly nutsoid. Particularly the only “argument” made – Rudd didn’t want family values to be eroded by the market. Therefore he was really a Maoist. Or something.
i’m dyslexic and i vote.
Agree. When Donnelly says that Bob Quinn commissioned a review of the Department of Education he is technically incorrect. The Review was commissioned by the DG of the day.
When he speaks of the ‘new basics’ he reveals an appalling lack of history and his ‘carelessness’ with the truth. The ‘new basics’ came into existences well after Rudd had departed.
To describe Rudd as a closet leftie is humorless joke.
Bolta’s busy mocking orthodox Jews.
Wow, that’ll confuse everybody who worries about the correct line on either side of the centre.
The comments thread on that post is an excellent illustration of the way that ratifying racial and/or religious intolerance and mockery in public life will unleash a flood of bile from private punters. Does he honestly believe that bringing out the worst in people is something to be proud of?
No not necessarily right wing Pav, more authoritarian. Language as acceptable behaviour rather than commmunication. To whit:
Authoritarian Personality
excessive conformity
submissiveness to authority
intolerance
insecurity
superstition
ridged, stereotyped thought patterns
Julia’s ‘mistake’, under any fair appraisal would be seen as a fairly common form of error to the extent that it’s a generally accepted form. If he wanted to make an issue of it he could have picked out the use of the I as the kind of faux gentility that Kath and Kim makes fun of. Peason could have made a nice line on aspirationalism but he didn’t because he is, as Phil correctly points out, a wanker.
The worst is definitely coming out; some heavy-duty antisemitism in that thread.
Totally on the money with the inner wanker analysis. Pearson is no dummy, although at times he goes to great lengths to prove he is.
I’ve no doubt this is an attempt to burly the water, knowing that at some time in the future, there’ll be a JG challenge on KR and he’s preparing his “conspiricy file”. The Kevin and I was highlighted more than required and one feels Pearson could have reported this another way.
Watch Pearson’s space, one day there’ll be a “I told you so”
PS: JG needs to learn a new word, its called “we” and it implies team.
Anthony, ’twere not I who said ‘right-wing’, ’twas Lynn; I was addressing her remark.
Regarding language, it depends whether one regards it merely as a means to an end — communication — or also as a thing of great beauty and complexity in and of itself. I see it as the latter, but I’m damned if I’ll wear the argument that that somehow makes me intolerant, insecure and superstitious.
I would like to at least try to keep the notion that grammar has clear rules, and they’re there for good pragmatic reasons, separate from the notion that it’s appropriate, or even productive, to nit-pick about a minor error of grammar in a politician’s public utterance. Personally I approve of the former and think the latter is silly.
It occurs to me that in picking out this, as Anthony says, very common (if irritating) error in Gillard’s remark, Pearson has rather seriously shot himself in the foot. What it suggests is that he’s really struggling to find things to criticise.
Pavlovs Cat, to most of the electorate, the “KR and I”, versus the “me” or “we” is irrelevant within the context of the messeage. And although I don’t know how other tabloids have reported this, I’d imagine no one has given it the weight that Pearson has.
To discount the possiblity of a hidden agenda simply as you have, save it and watch this space
Yes, that’s pretty much exactly what I just said myself.
Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean. Where did I say I discounted the possibility of a hidden agenda?
There are many, many more than two possible positions on this.
At least Pearson wasn’t talking about what she was wearing.
I think people are being very unfair to Mr Pearson. How else would we know what to think about Ms Gillard, if that wonderfully erudite, sensitive and well bred man, didn’t point out her obvious unfitness for high office? I feel he was being his usually well bred self in not going directly to the point. How could such a person, an unmarried woman with such an appalling accent, ever think she could aspire to be the Deputy Prime Minister of this country? Her grammatical awkwardness merely underlines this important point, one which Mr Pearson was helpfully making.
Oh, Miss/Mrs Prism, I know! And that lovely Mr Pearson is most correct.
That awful gell as Deputy PM? Next thing you know we’ll all be interviewed in an Australian post office by a Chinese or Indian just to get an Australian passport.
Could you imagine such things?
Apologies Pav, I was trying to address your addressing of Lynn.
I think we’re in agreement here. We would say hotpants in winter are wrong on several levels, Peason is saying ‘tsk’ – there’s your difference.
Heh.
Because some evil sod has clearly sold Malcolm Turnbull a mailing list with my email address on it, I now get his newsletter, and I am happy to report that he can’t do pronouns either. Tsk.
Pavlov’s Cat, I apologise profusely for inferring that anyone who picked up grammatical errors was a fat right-wing columnist. That’s an appalling imputation.
I myself love to note grammatical errors (I hate the confusion of ‘amount’ with ‘number’, for instance) and am especially fond of jeering at mispronunciations (nucular for nuclear, for instance) but would not choose to base my assessment of someone’s leadership on their verbal entanglements.
As it seems you don’t either, can we just go back to saying that Pearson sucks?
On the subject of Pearson sucking I can see precisley no basis for his (or Paul Kellys) suggestion that Labors IR policy is “a guarantee of electoral failure in its own right.”
The polls just don’t support them. Labor currently leads the Coalition by 21% as the best party to handle IR. Workchoices lead to Labor’s credibility increasing its lead on this issue by about 10% in 2005, a lead which it has maintained ever since.
Opposition to Workchoices increased Labors credibility on IR, it has put the issue on the map electorally, with newspoll recording a 22% increase in the number of voters considering it an important issue between now and 2004.
Nor does it seem to have hurt Labor’s economic credibility. Labors (abysmal) rating on economic policy has in fact increased by 2% since 2004 while the Coalitions has dropped by about 5%.
PC said: “Team’ is a singular noun and therefore can’t subsequently be referred to in the same sentence by the plural pronoun ‘their’.”
*cough*
Cough yourself, Robert. Brilliant link, I hope lots and lots of people reads it. But since it appear to be endlessly equivocal, I are sticking to my noun-verb agreement in number argument — certainly within a single clause, anyway. (My guess are that the word ‘construction’ in that large-type rule actually mean ‘clause’ anyway.)
I’d fisk it, but for some reason discussion of grammar seem to enrage people.
Very droll.
However, the post is not equivocal on the nit you picked:
In this case, Pearson was pointing to the (supposed) disunity of the Rudd/Gillard team. In that context, it is perfectly acceptable to talk about “the way the dream team see their roles”.
As with so many grammatical line balls, the real solution would have been to rewrite the sentence. ‘… the way the members of the dream team see their roles’ would have got him out of it unscathed.
Except of course for the lame and tatty ‘dream team’ trope, hackneyed even when used ironically, as here.
The Language Log writers would be the last people in the world to endorse the adducing of any of their posts as rules for the rest of us. Particularly as the post makes a point of noting that the usage the writer prefers is typically North American.
The Language Log gang are a bunch of bad mofos, saw them chain whip some prescriptivist unconscious just for mentioning ‘whom’.
Rabbit/Duck duality. You either see a team or family as a single entity or as a collection of individuals – both are correct.
no no no. “unless the meaning of the phrase emphasizes semantic multiplicity”
True, Laura. The main reason I linked to it was because PC set forth a rule. I was pointing out that people who know about these things don’t like her rule. And as for the North American part… well, don’t they say that the plural form is more likely to be used in British English…?
Could we be losing sight of the fact that I “set forth a rule” as part of the perhaps too tacitly made point that snarking about other people’s grammar, as Pearson did in his piece, makes one very vulnerable about one’s own? Robert seems to have taken me up on this fact with some glee but without noticing that that’s what I was doing myself in the first place.
I also don’t much fancy the implication that the Language Log people are ‘people who know about these things’ and the rest of us are ignorant losers.
And finally, I don’t give a rat’s furry backside what the Language Log people say: mixing up singular nouns and plural pronouns just isn’t logical.
In all the comments above, nobody spots the really striking thing about what Pearson said: that his evidence doesn’t support his point, it shows the opposite.
For those who DO give a rat’s furry backside about getting the grammar right, I’ve explained at Language Log (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003937.html).
Rub the lamp and the genie descends….
Geoff, thank you for your Language Log post but it has left me a bit confused. Suppose we think of Julia Gillard as obeying roughly the following rules:
- Put any pronouns found in a subject position in nominative form
- Put any pronouns found in an object position in accusative form
In the guilty sentence, “Kevin and I” is in the object position, so by the above rules she must recast it it to “Kevin and me”. The fact she has failed to do this could be explained by either of two things:
(1) she does not consider the above rules infallible; she makes an exception for pronouns that follow the coordinator “and”; or
(2) she can’t always tell the difference between the subject and object of a sentence (the occasions on which she can’t are when “and” intervenes in this particular way).
Your explanation is (1), Pearson’s is (2), or at least is compatible with (2). So can you explain how the evidence supports your theory better?
Hi there. Just pointing out that the Language Log is written by linguists, who spend a lot of time investigating language. Like any other researchers, they usually have something very interesting to contribute. I know many linguists and none of them think that non-linguists are ignorant losers. Unless of course they make stupid and untested claims about language.
Linguo, thanks for that information. Without it, none of us would ever have realised that Language Log is written by linguists.
Gosh no, isn’t that interesting? How could I have read it so often without noticing that?
I retract the rat’s furry backside. (As it were.) I think Language Log is a wonderful thing, which is why I read it regularly. It’s just that I don’t fancy being hit over the head with its authority for having made a perfectly reasonable claim about grammar, and what’s more having made it in passing and in jest.
Sheesh.
Just pointing out that the Language Log is written by linguists, who spend a lot of time investigating language.
Wow! That’s so cool! Here we are all chorus girls in stage musicals!
I’m surprised at all the fuss over my claim that Julia Gillard has a problem with subjects and objects in sentences, on the basis of her confusion about the use of the nominative I and the accusative me.
Nothing Mr Pullum has to say strikes me as persuasive. A ( by standard practice subsequently edited) maiden speech proves nothing. His claim that “all the evidence supports the opposite conclusion” is demonstrably wrong. There’s no escaping the fact that those two uses of “Kevin and I” should have been in the accusative : “Kevin and me”. Pullum’s gloss is reminiscent of the argument that black can look very white in the end if you think about it hard enough.
It is neither snobbish nor smart-arse to reproach her.Gillard has a double degree in Arts/Law and really ought to know better. In fact I suspect this is not a case of aspirational genteelism of the kind Kath and Kim parody but agressive philistinism and/or making the kind of mistakes she thinks, patronisingly, typical of the proletariat. However, most people who went to the SA Education Dept’s primary schools (as she and I both did) prior to 1977 knew how to parse a sentence by Grade 7 and knew about I and me because they were drummed into us by teachers who generally believed that a decent education in the fundamentals was everyone’s birthright.
Chris fails to see why maintaining Kim Beazley’s IR policy damages Rudd’s economic credibility. He needs to ask himself : 1 How much foregone activity will re-regulation cost the economy, how much flexibility and how many jobs ? 2 Will business just shrug and write those costs off as the price you pay for having Labor in power, or will they compare Rudd to Blair in similar circumstances and judge him a dud? 3 Will the people who’ve taken up the 200,000 new jobs that have been generated since Work Choices and in all probability 200,000 more by next November vote for a Labor Party that’s more concerned about re-entrenching union priviledge than keeping the policy that helped them get a job?
Thanks for dropping in, Christopher.
In Victorian state primary schools prior to 1980 they always taught us that there are two ‘g’s in aggressive and that privilege is best enjoyed without a ‘d’ – unless, of course, one is trying to do something Machiavellian involving misspellings of the varieties most favoured by the rabble one’s keenest on rousing that weekend.
So she was deliberately making a common grammatical error because she hates the common people? Or because she wants to grind the English language into dust beneath her wickedly pointed witchy and aggressively philistinic* boots?
I am confused. Probably because I was not educated in SA primary schools prior to 1977.
*NB, have no idea if philistinic is a word, but that’s because I hate the common people.
Wow they’re all showing up.
You know who’s got crap grammar? Scarlett Johansson that’s who.
Actually, I’d like to hear more about the Great SA Full Stop Shortage of ‘63.
And Johnny Depp, he’s always using “singular they”, the great booby….
Props to Chris Pearson for joining the blogosphere.
While I agree that a proper education is necessary, and that people should try to speak clearly, I don’t think bitching about Gillard’s use of I/me is a productive use of your space in the national newspaper. It’s a bit pathetic, really.
But while we’re nitpicking, and given that this is just a humble blog comment and not an op-ed, let me add to Laura’s list:
It looks like you lost a space there.
Oh, there it is, hiding near the colon.
Aaah! They’re everywhere!
“I’m surprised at all the fuss over my claim that Julia Gillard has a problem with subjects and objects in sentences…”
So you penned your piece in the hope it would just sink into oblivion without leaving a ripple? How delightfully and surprisingly ingenuous of you.
Yes, props for plunging into the blogosphere. But I doubt you’ll be back. Too many of your ilk seem to lack the stomach for genuine debate beyond dinner table and op-ed pages politesse.
Don’t you believe it. Although I’m not at all convinced that it was really him, you know. There is no way known that he would have made either of those spelling mistakes.
There was a mouse plague in rural SA that year. They ate them.
Can’t speak for the city dudes, but.
The first rule of bitching about someone else’s grammar and punctuation is that you will invariably make an error yourself and come across looking like a tool.
Hey Anthony, they quoted you on Language Log! I’m not sure they quite understood that you were being complimentary, but anyway…
Wow!
That just put’s the ill in illocutionary.
Does it get any better?
That misplaced apostrophe is just adorable. Come here sexy.
Christopher Pearson just won’t listen, will he? Certainly, those two uses of “Kevin and I” should have been in the accusative (“Kevin and me”) IF YOU ASSUME that the relevant rule is definitely this one: “Pronouns inside coordinate structures have to be in the case form that they would have if they were substituted for the whole coordinate structure.” People who like correcting other people’s grammar but haven’t really studied it seriously always seem to think that logic or God or Parliament has ordained that the rule must be framed exactly that way. But there is a ton of evidence that many highly educated Standard English speakers operate by a different rule. They’re not just stumbling or flubbing their words; the rule they use is a different one (it’s basically a very tiny dialect difference).
Perhaps more important is that quite independently of that subtle point, Pearson just hasn’t taken on board my general observation that he phrased his accusation way too broadly. (I suspect he didn’t read my Language Log post with any care.) His claim was that Gillard doesn’t know subject from object. That would imply that she can’t say things like “Australia has offered me opportunities” or “I have only been able…” without getting them wrong half the time. And what he appears to suggest (this staggered me) is that she may actually have said things like “Australia has offered I opportunities” or “Me have only been able” in Parliament, but clerks edited them to make them right! I can hardly believe this guy. Could he possibly be serious? I still find it hard to believe some of the things people will try to get away with when they’re pontificating about language.
Of course she knows subjects from objects, and that means his point collapses. What remains is a subtle issue about the rule(s) Standard English speakers use for pronoun case in coordinations of noun phrases, and discussion of that issue is apparently a class or two above Pearson’s attainment level in grammar.
Christopher Pearson I am no economist so I can’t give you an accurate answer to your first question, although I do note that there has been some exaggeration about the economic benefits of labour market deregulation as far as productivity is concern.
You go on to ask me weather business will “just shrug and write those costs off as the price you pay for having Labor in power, or will they compare Rudd to Blair in similar circumstances and judge him a dud?�
The various business lobbies have been very supportive of Workchoices and so yes I think they will judge Rudd to be a dud if he adopts a policy of anything but acquiescence to Workchoices in its entirety.
Now certainly the scorn of the business community can be a dangerous thing for a politician to attract. I put it to you, however, that Rudd would suffer much more were he to attract the scorn of his party, the union movement and most importantly the majority of the public who are relying on Labor to oppose a set of laws that they to are adamantly opposed to.
He would also completely undermine his family values pitch, which is based mainly around opposition to Workchoices.
Your third question was:
The 200,000 new jobs thanks to Workchoices figure gets bandied about rather a lot, and while I don’t deny that some of the said jobs are a consequence of Workchoices I am yet to see any hard evidence that all of them are. Indeed I can’t help but suspect that in a world where Workchoices received bi-partisan support and the Governments welfare to work changes caused a great deal of controversy we would be hearing about how welfare to work had generated 200.000 jobs.
Certainly some of the people who have gained jobs will see this as a consequence of Workchoices, but I see no evidence that all or even most of them will and in any case they are vastly outnumbered by the majority of Australians who violently oppose (Nick Minchin’s words) Workchoices.
I also reject the notion that anyone but died in the wool Coalition supporters see Labor as simply trying to “re-entrenching union priviledge.� Unlike some public figures, the Australian people do not suffer from a pathological hatred of organized labour. Indeed attitudes towards unions have been steadily improving for some time now.
We should have grammar threads more often.
I hate grammar, unless that school marm Chris Pearson is involved….
I never make predictions and I never will. But I’m willing to bet one bottle of the Macallan 18 year old* that ole Pearsy won’t be back. One of things I do like about blogging is watching MSM pundits of all stripes getting their arses waxed by the common folk whenever they venture off the reservation and tip a toe in the blogosphere.
*This competition not open to Christopher Pearson or his employees or members of his immediate family.
A bonus dram payable in person for spotting the grammatical and spelling mistakes in my last comment.
Nabokov is a a pompous reactionary drip.
Not Vlad, of course, this idiot above who can’t even spell.
Big p and small P praxis, please note that the comments policy deems unacceptable:
Do you have a point, or do you just want to abuse Nabs? If the latter, don’t. If the former, please make it.
“…is a a pompous…”
“…who can’t even spell.”
I see the curse of the spelling and grammar flame strikes again.
I don’t think that went quite the way you intended did it P(p)raxi?
Also I’m puzzled by being called “pompous” and “reactionary”. “Drunk” and “arrogant” would be far more on target.
2/10. Must try much harder or risks being held back next year.
From RobS:
The simplest way would be to look at whenever she uses pronouns in the context of a conjunction. She may be honestly confused if she appears to randomly switch between the two, saying “X and I” and “X and me” on a constant basis. If, on the other hand, she constantly uses a single variant, then chances are there’s no confusion involved whatsoever – it’s more than likely a grammatical rule that she’s following, rather than a lack thereof.
We see, if we look through her various speeches, that she never uses “X and me” – this should be a red flag that she isn’t doing it for kicks, but is instead doing it for grammatical reasons, and that she actually knows quite well what subjects and objects are (indeed, it would be difficult to imagine that she wouldn’t know the difference anyway – it’s a pretty fundamental one in Australian English…)
Of course, I just ignore the whole issue and use “X and myself”, but I’ve been told that I’m a dirty fence-sitter for doing so…
In phrases like “Kevin and me” (or “Kevin and I”) “and” doesn’t function as a conjunction at all – it’s doing the work of a preposition.
While the sentence “Kevin and me rolled Kim” can be unpacked to read “Kevin rolled Kim and me rolled Kim”, that’s a distinctly artificial construction of the intended meaning – the sort of silliness you’re forced to if you insist that “and” is always employed as a conjunction (even when the sentence context indicates a prepositional usage).