A University of California at Berkeley graduate journalism student received help from the institution after sending out messages through Twitter while under arrest in Egypt, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
James Karl Buck was arrested while photographing a demonstration in Egypt. He sent out the message “Arrested” on microblogging service Twitter, and friends in his network quickly notified Berkeley and the U.S. Embassy. The next day a local attorney hired by his university got him out of jail, although his interpreter, who is not an American citizen, apparently remains behind bars.—Catherine Rampell
17 Responses to Student Gets University Help via Twitter After Egypt Arrest
Terry Collmann - May 21, 2012 at 5:29 am
Does it for me.
jpaterna49 - May 21, 2012 at 7:27 am
I think Tarzan is conclusive proof of the “Bow-wow” theory!
maddavis - May 21, 2012 at 9:51 am
I have always wanted someone to write a mystery novel with a lexicographer as hero.
jffoster - May 21, 2012 at 10:45 am
suggest this is barking up the wrong tree.
jffoster - May 21, 2012 at 10:51 am
Obviously, Professor Metcalf has it figured out almost exactly. The only thing wrong is that of course there weren’t any words until they were actually written down, and nobody could talk until after writing had been invented and there could be a the dictionary to be consulted. (Oh my, there’s a passive! ). That explains why many prescriptivist language mavens and a good many of the public general think, or assume without thinking, that writing is preeminent over speech and talk about the ____ as having / not having “a written language” as though the language gets reinvented and restructured when its speakers acquire writing.
Lester Bryant III - May 21, 2012 at 11:05 am
Wouldn’t neologism have come first?
jpaterna49 - May 21, 2012 at 11:38 am
you could say that about this entire discussion.
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11182967 - May 21, 2012 at 12:17 pm
So the first Noah was Webster? In the beginning was the word? Well, maybe. But words, ie enunciated sounds with concrete referents, are found throughout the animal kingdom. With all due respect to words, it’s undoubtedly grammer which created language. Words are the easy part; putting them together into meangingful utterances is a lot more complicated. So that lightning-struck proto-human was much more likely to be Ms. Grundy thant Mr. Webster. Yet another example, Metcalf, of gender-biased speculation. For shame!
Socratease2 - May 21, 2012 at 12:49 pm
“I have a better explanation, based on pure logic. I’ll call it the “Johnny Appleseed” explanation.”
“Pure logic” just left a voice-mail, it wants you to stop sullying its good reputation.
dank48 - May 21, 2012 at 4:51 pm
I’m not really irony-challenged, but this attitude is more prevalent than one would like to think. The head of the FL department at my daughter’s high school claimed, in writing, that ASL isn’t actually a language because it doesn’t have a literature.
She’d have been on surer ground if she’d objected that it doesn’t involve the tongue.
jffoster - May 21, 2012 at 8:22 pm
And in the 21st century, for somebody like the head of a high school foreign language department, or a high school teacher of anything, let alone college professors, there is no excuse for that kind of ignorance. Actually, is surpasses ignorance. Ignoramosity is what it is.
maxbini - May 21, 2012 at 8:57 pm
All the jokes aside, the question of the origin of language is a matter for philosophers not linguists. The question relates to how we are in the world such that language is possible and this requires an understanding of what is essential to language. Let us not confuse the analysis of language for what language is.
“Let’s ask ourselves: Why do we feel a grammatical joke to be deep? (And that is what the depth of philosophy is.)” Ludwig Wittgenstein.
wclibrary - May 22, 2012 at 6:46 am
Pure punctuation just left you a voice mail.
Socratease2 - May 22, 2012 at 4:24 pm
Oh, did it now? And what did “pure punctuation” have to say about my sentence, Ms. Manners? There is supposed to be a punch line after the first clause, don’t you know how the joke works? Do you have anything substantive (or at least witty) to add to this discussion or do you also believe that the exercise of “pure logic” includes the task of imagining a person struck by lightning is the source of human language. That is pure something but certainly not logic. You have a problem with that critique? If so, let’s hear it, I don’t need a copy editor.
Socratease2 - May 22, 2012 at 4:29 pm
ASL isn’t a “language” or isn’t a “foreign language?” Which was teacher arguing? That would make a big difference in this discussion. Clearly it is a language (regardless of the nonsense comment from teacher about literature) but ASL probably is never described as a “foreign language” I assume.
CatoJr - May 23, 2012 at 3:19 pm
“As we have learned, perhaps in elementary school, a word isn’t a word unless it’s in the dictionary…Therefore, you need the dictionary before you can utter a word.” What a remarkable leap of faith (a logical fallacy). The premise is believed to be correct in the current elementary schools, not ones that existed a hundred or a thousand years ago. It certainly does not extrapolate to prehistoric times. The continuation of the argument inherits the fallacy.