These giggle reactions to words whose meanings are different now persist
into college ... although the merriment is subdued and not  disruptive,
as it might be in "lower" grades.

I guess it's a maturational process -- my little 3-year-old friend
currently works "poop" into every imaginable context. It's pretty much
the same thing.

I'm not surprised that kids in K-12 are still far inside their peer
group -- what I find harder to grasp is that they stay in there so long
in college. Even my college seniors don't seem to have realized that it
is now more important for them to impress their teachers than their
peers. I guess that's the effect of college's artificial prolonging of
adolescence.

***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~  E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
***************************************************

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