There come times when a thing you’ve known time out of memory suddenly opens before you, blossoms into beauty where you’d never known to seek it. These are times of transfiguration, and in their witness to both the humble hiddenness of beauty and the deep meaningfulness of reality, they refresh our faith in a world […]
Parts of Speech: A Reconsideration in Grammar and Philosophy Read More »
Language use is in decline, has been for over a century, and is not going to turn around in the next century. So what to do about it when the kid in front of you (and you too!) is (are?) part of that decline? Be patiently diligent to awaken him or her to the nature,
Among the most profound mistakes of our era, I am convinced we would have to list the shift from the liberal arts to subjects in our schools. If you teach subjects, one of the many unfortunate things that happens is that students quickly catch on that there is content (i.e. information to be remembered) in
What is rhetoric? You’ve probably heard or thought of rhetoric as the art of persuasion. Fans of Aristotle will probably think of it as the art of finding the available means of persuasion. If you follow in the vein of Quintilian, you will probably think of it as the art of persuasion toward truth (and
Have you ever encountered a paragraph that itself was worth the price of the book? I did while reading Dr. Scott F. Crider’s The Office of Assertion. Here it is, linguaphiles (for free!): In the metaphysics of grammar, each part of speech concerns one of three conditions—being, becoming, or relation: Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives concern
How England’s Elizabethan Renaissance Offers Guidance to us for a Similar Experience
