Sunday, October 31, 2010

Sarah Palin: 21st Century English Wordsmith?

Now resorting to invent new English words - like "refudiate" - in order to achieve her own political ends, is the former Alaska governor guilty of being anti-semantic?


By: Ringo Bones


Ever since inventing the word “refudiate” – her own corruption of the word repudiate in one of her Twitter messages calling on “…Muslims to “refudiate…”, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin had since gained fame – or notoriety – of corrupting the English language hitherto not witnessed since Dr. Samuel Johnson created the first definitive English dictionary to rein in on William Shakespeare’s rather free-spirited spelling of English words according to the great bard’s creative mood.

Even though she is still grammatically spot-on, Sarah Palin can only be accused of brandishing the ass-end of the Queen’s English every time she invents a new word in order to achieve her own political ends. Given that her somewhat extreme right-wing stance is enough to make ethnic minorities in America squirm does she really have to resort to anti-semantic stunts in order to gain political clout?