At school we had an English teacher with a posh accent who used words like ‘cursory’ and ‘equivocation’, and after class we’d be giggling and mimicking him and saying ‘cursory’ and ‘equivocation’ in hyper-posh voices. You can witness something similar over at HP, who are wriggling with adolescent glee at the mention of Roland Barthes & the sighting of non-demotic language here at Charlotte Street.
Anyway, It’s probably no coincidence that after HP linked to this post a number of suitably witless and abusive (in one case homophobic) remarks began to appear in various comments threads below. Needless to say, the policy here, as at other civilised forums, is that comments of an abusive nature – whether directed at me or other commenters - will be deleted and the posters banned. I have therefore deleted the abusive ones. The purely witless can remain.
Finally, I must just take time to address one of the more bizarre inventions from the comments box at HP. One of the ferrets in that particular sack assured another that Kaplan was ‘unemployed’ and had ‘posted about his unemployment’. Needless to say, neither of these inexplicable claims has any basis in reality. However, I hear from others that petty slanders are not only common at HP, they're pretty much a house speciality.