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Hitchens doesn't do anything beyond making this observation I don't think that's fair. He wove a lot of observations into the piece. Hitchens is a man of lett

• foldr 17y ago
  >He wove a lot of observations into the piece. In what sense were they "observations"? I did see a lot of assertions about people's use of language that weren't backed up by any data, but I didn't see any observations. >Hitchens is a man of letters, not an academic linguist. I guess my question would be whether you'd be equally happy if he wrote in the same style about (say) physics, geology or programming. Is there something special about language that makes it unnecessary for commentators to know anything about their subject? And really, the article is about like, for goodness sake. There are literally thousands of grumpy, contentless articles of this sort written over the past couple decades.