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