The term Lingua Franca, as many readers know, stems from a 16th-century Mediterranean reference to the language used between speakers of different tongues as “the language of the Francs,” the Francs being all Western Europeans – that is, all non-Greeks. Since then, the Francs has come to mean the inhabitants of France – though most would agree that English, not French, is the lingua franca of our era throughout much of the world.
The gist of the title of this blog, which we are laying to rest at the end of this week, has been, in my view, that whatever we as writers are examining in terms of language crosses frontiers – frontiers between pedagogy and common usage, politics and rhetoric, rule-makers and rule-breakers. Because we are a blog that encourages commentary, we also reach through the distance that otherwise separates authors from reader. And our readers, in their responses, have been remarkably frank. That is, like the Franks in Frankish Gaul, they are free, without hindrance (except by way of Chronicle guidelines) in how they respond. They are not, to reference another aspect of “frankness,” always sincere, and occasionally they have been ungenerous. But for the most part, I have deeply appreciated the contribution made by you, our readers, to the discourse in Lingua Franca. Your contributions, criticisms, encouragement, and even tangential argument have kept us inspired and on our toes for more than seven years.
Here are some of my favorite responses. I’ve gone through all my posts, but for the sake of brevity have limited the selections below to posts that garnered more than 40 responses, since, as the commenter “dank48″ once noted, “Sometimes the effect of an article can be measured, in a sense, by the comments it provokes.”
My most commented-on post, on “manspreading,” got a whopping 159 responses, including the following:
In the past, if you wanted to nag a man, you had to marry him first.
There’s a big difference between the comfortable “hang” of standing versus the “scrunch” of sitting, & it’s very much more pronounced with age & weight (I won’t go into the details).
The term Lingua Franca, as many readers know, stems from a 16th-century Mediterranean reference to the language used between speakers of different tongues as “the language of the Francs,” the Francs being all Western Europeans – that is, all non-Greeks. Since then, the Francs has come to mean the inhabitants of France – though most would agree that English, not French, is the lingua franca of our era throughout much of the world.
