Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 10:08:11 -0500

From: Larry Rosenwald LROSENWALD[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]WELLESLEY.EDU

Subject: Re: vernacular



I came across this interesting use of the term in Chang-Rae

Lee's novel _Native Speaker_; the narrator, a Korean American named

Henry Park, is writing about an ambitious, visionary politician named

John Kwang, also Korean American:

"I suppose it was a question of imagination. What I was able to

see. Before I knew of him, I had never even conceived of someone like

him. A Korean man, of his age, as part of the vernacular. Not just

a respectable grocer or dry cleaner or doctor, but a larger public figure

who was willing to speak and act outside the tight sphere of his family"

(139).

What struck me about this was the honorific sense it seemed to

me "vernacular" was being used in - meaning, more or less, "lofty public

idiom."

Best, Larry Rosenwald