The Professor Who Blogs

If you enjoy reading The Chronicle of Higher Education, you’re probably familiar with the blog “Lingua Franca.”  Lucy Ferriss, writer in residence at Trinity College and author of 10 books, including 7 novels, a collection of short stories and a memoir, has been writing for the blog for almost five years.  Lingua Franca was originally a magazine about intellectual and literary life in academia; after it folded, Chronicle editor Heidi Landecker decided to turn it into a blog and invited Ferriss to be one of the initial bloggers.   213 blog posts later, Ferriss still very much enjoys writing for Lingua Franca.

What’s blogging like?  Ferriss explains that because blogging is a short form, a writer needs to learn how to make a point concisely – the goal is to prompt ideas.  Speaking of ideas – Ferriss says that she gets ideas everywhere, because language is everywhere.  “I find interesting tidbits in the news, in the classroom, in emails that friends send me.”  

Ferriss’ most recent post http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/02/17/me-myself-i-and-yourselves-too/ (2/17/16) examines the use of “the reflexive pronoun in a non-reflexive way.”  I appreciate this post because I find myself correcting my son when he refers to himself as “myself.”  It may be, according to Ferriss, that speakers are resorting to this usage to avoid the “pretentious or narcissistic I” or the misused “me.”  Take a look – you’ll enjoy it!

Here’s what Ferriss has to say about the process of blogging: 

When I begin a blog post, I'm rarely aware of how far it will take me down any number of paths, be they etymological, political, or cultural. Blogging in general feels like a different form for writing, and it took me a while to get the hang of it. Much depends on the links you provide to material elsewhere that either informs your thinking on the subject or suggests another path that a reader might want to pursue. It's not quite the same as footnotes, because the conversation is more "live," more interconnected via the Internet.

The “live” nature of blogs is directly related to the interactivity inspired by the form.  Reader comments are, in fact, integral to a blog’s success.   Ferriss says that she is fascinated by the comments she receives.  “Often these are quite witty and entertaining and lend a lot to the dialogue. Sometimes, as in the comments to my post on "manspreading" -http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/01/06/otiose-manspreading/ - I'm simply flabbergasted.”  

She and the other Lingua Franca bloggers appreciate responses to the posts as well as suggestions for language topics.  Ferriss encourages readers not just to check out the blog, but to comment and to let their voices be heard.

Ferriss, who has been at Trinity since 2000, has taught literature as well as creative writing, and for some years she taught a course on sentence diagramming that was highlighted in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In addition to writing her weekly Lingua Franca posts, Ferriss is currently writing a historical novel set in New York State in late 17th century, during the transition from Dutch to English rule.  Visit her website at www.lucyferriss.com.