Hi All,
I'm new to this forum and am usually a lurker, but this post caught my eye.
Oddly enough, Bill, I've been assessment meetings where people have objected to phrasing a goal as "Students will celebrate diversity." The conversation was humorously centered around the idea that people would or could have a party or practice some form of ritual with diversity. So, I see what you mean about celebrating reading, though I guess we could have reading rituals and parties.
Good one!

----- Original Message -----
From: John Dews-Alexander 
Date: Thursday, March 4, 2010 4:33 pm
Subject: Re: Celebrating complement shifts
To: [log in to unmask]

> Bill, very interesting question! I immediately recall a recent trip <BR>> to Walt
> Disney World where the current theme for the entire resort is, 
> "What will
> YOU celebrate?" At numerous spots in the resort, there were places 
> wherepeople wrote their answers to exactly that question. The 
> things being
> celebrated were eclectic to say the least. I remember responses that
> include: "horses," "love," "our anniversary," "Italian food," "peace,"
> "hotdogs," "laughter," "my friend visiting me," "iPhones," and my 
> personalfavorite, "how much I paid to write this on the wall."
> 
> I have to admit that "celebrate reading" doesn't sound odd to me. I 
> attendeda party last year to "celebrate pirates". Perhaps there is 
> a shift in the
> meaning of "celebrate" -- something I'll definitely be pondering 
> for the
> next few days!
> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Spruiell, William C 
> wrote:
> > Since it’s apparently National Grammar Day (“Throw a Participle! 
> ™), I
> > thought I’d toss out a usage-related question:
> >
> >
> >
> > NCTE sent me an email a day or so ago with the header “Celebrate 
> Reading.”> The part of my brain that does linguistic snap judgments 
> doesn’t like using
> > ‘celebrate’ with gerunds or non-holiday-referent nouns as objects 
> (I can
> > celebrate birthdays, or the 4th of July, but I can’t celebrate 
> reading).> This is the kind of emotional reaction to language that 
> a lot of bad
> > prescriptive rules have come from in the past; I’m certainly not 
> saying that
> > I think everyone should abandon all usages that someone finds 
> odd, even if
> > that someone is me – but I’m interested in language change, and 
> my finding
> > the usage odd is possibly a result of my being older (like with the
> > “graduate from high school” vs. “graduate high school” shift). 
> It’s also
> > possible that I’ve idiosyncratically imposed limits on 
> ‘celebrate’ that no
> > one else shares.
> >
> >
> >
> > I started digging around in the Corpus of Contemporary American 
> English (
> > http://www.americancorpus.org/; it’s incredibly useful for
> > English-teachers and linguists). The incidence of ‘celebrate’ in 
> general> may have slightly increased since 1994 (I don’t know how 
> to check for
> > significance with these kinds of numbers), as may have the 
> incidence of
> > non-holiday-nyms after it, but if there’s a pattern, it’s not the
> > hit-you-over-the-head type. That’s just since ’94, though.
> >
> >
> >
> > What do you folks think? Does “celebrate reading” sound odd? How 
> about> “celebrate assessment”? Okay, that last one was rigged, but 
> you get the
> > idea.
> >
> >
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> >
> >
> > Bill Spruiell
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
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