A reference to North Melbourne’s ‘galliant’ effort sparks complaints and a staff reminder at Aunty; A Current Affair has a welfare shocker and SBS’s original comedy series goes straight to Facebook It’s no doubt reassuring to many that there is someone at the ABC who is keeping an eye on standards,English language standards that is. The ABC’s Standing Committee On Spoken English or Scose was set up by Alexander George Mitchell in 1946, a professionally trained phonetician who conducted the first linguistically rigorous study into the Australian accent. But Scose was abandoned a year ago and a full-time staffer made redundant, and a victim of budget cuts.
The task of ABC language researcher has now been given to Tiger Webb,a young producer in the science unit who interned on the Radio National program Lingua Franca. Webb puts out a delightful newsletter once a month for staff to keep abreast of crimes against language and style changes. It contains advice such as don’t consume the term “mastermind” to describe Abdelhamid Abooud because of a concern “that the term mastermind implies an unwelcome level of intellect, glamour, and cultural cachet”.
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Source: theguardian.com