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Toward an Understanding of Language: Charles Carpenter Fries in Perspective (review)

In the essay "Fries and Linguistic Geography," their contribution to this volume on the life and work of Charles C. Fries, Raven and Virginia McDavid record their admiration for him as "someone who had lived his life fully to the last, and who had provided a model of energy, honesty, and generosity" (231). Happy concurrence in that judgment can be expected from all the contributors and the many readers who will welcome an attempt to place Fries "in perspective." But it is regrettable that Raven McDavid, whose memory the volume also honors, should have used the occasion to calumniate the good citizens who persuaded the Ann Arbor school board (however mistakenly) not to appeal the court's decision in "the Black English case." Peter and Nancy Fries, as editors, would have removed a blemish from McDavid's good scholarship and their good book if they had insisted on the excision of terms like "platoon of experts," "putative linguists," "the ringleaders," "the mob," and even "lynching posse."