Perhaps there is some small comfort we can derive from the US economic crisis and the non-glorification of Wall Street.Perhaps -- oh, I can dream, can't I? -- before long we will no longer be subjected to the annoying, tread-worn advertising campaign "Do You Speak English?"in the metro, with the grinning model giving a thumbs up, or thumb-and forefinger in the A-Okay sign.
"Yes! I speak Wall Street English."
Perhaps the Wall Street Institute will change its name to the Main Street Institute? Here's a possible ad poster.
3 comments:
Watch out: you could get a school that promises to teach Sarah Palin English, also, you know, the kind of English that ordinary middle-class folks speak in, you betcha, ordinary middle-class places like, also, Alaska there. Sample:
Talking at the debate about how she would “positively affect the impacts” of the climate change for which she’s loath to acknowledge human culpability, she did a dizzying verbal loop-de-loop: “With the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that, as governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change subcabinet to start dealing with the impacts.” That was, miraculously, richer with content than an answer she gave Katie Couric: “You know, there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, with these impacts.”
See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05dowd.html?ref=opinion
Art,
Good point.
I was secretly hoping more for the Katie Couric School of English.
Or Garrison Keillor. Something akin to the late Charles Kurault's style, perhaps.
Anything to eradicate those annoying "Yes!" posters. There was one in each car of the line 10 train I was riding in this morning!
I met someone in Paris who spoke very choppy, non-sensical english, and when I asked him if he really spoke english he earnestly said, 'yes! I speak wall street english!'
It's funny--I used to be so tired of seeing those posters, but now that I'm back in the US this picture just kind of made me miss them.
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