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Reviews
The Chair (2021)
The Pedant Professor
Having been chair of an English department for the last six years of my working life, I really looked forward to the series. But watching it just confirmed the enormous divide there is between American and European culture. As a linguist interested in prescriptivism I did hold my breath when in the third episode there was a comment on the use of 'who' which should have been 'whom'. So I continued to watch, and was rewarded when in the fifth episode there was another such comment, this time on the pronunciation of 'prescient", British or American? But only to allow the character to be portrayed as a racist, getting more and more entangled into the issue as he went along ("I don't say that because you're Asian. I mean, I don't even know that you are Asian" etc.). No, English professors don't go around correcting their colleagues' language, and no, linguists don't do so either. We observe and describe, and that is what made this series of interest to me. Also, I went through all 167 previous comments, and was surprised to see that no-one commented on this particular stereotype.
Roadkill (2020)
Why comment on who used for whom?
I watched this series a year ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Just checked with my husband, and he too rated it 10/10. But as a linguist interested in prescriptivism I held my breath in Episode 4 for when the senior barrister criticises he junior colleague for using 'who' rather than the grammatically more correct 'whom'. So I read all preceding 126 Reviews to see if anyone else had noticed it, but not so. Why would the scriptwriters have chosen to raise this issue at all? Is it meant as a punch below the belt when there was no other way to blame him for the case they had lost? It is the only linguistic comment in the entire series. Does it matter that both actors are people of colour? Because the script reads "By whom is English if you want to be a lawyer", not "good English", which would have made sense if real inclusiveness had been intended. So what is the unwritten message here?
A Very British Scandal (2021)
A linguistic inaccuracy ...
... in the script occurs when in the third episode,at 40 minutes or so, the Duke of Argyle says to the Duchess: "This battle between you and I ...". It is most unlikely for a man of his background at this time in history to say this. Even today it would be unlikely. I wonder what made the script writers put it in.