- By Jim Evans
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Smart Talk SMART TALK By Dr. Parley Speake
TRIADS OF THREE PEOPLE: Professor Pompous Fatuous Failem is chairman of the Department of Tautology at Bedspring Tech, down the road in Los Libidos, Texas.
Like many social scientists, he often seems to value linguistic posturing over clarity. Just try to read his articles in the scholarly quarterlies, and you’ll see what I mean.
In his communications class, where he trains future public employees and more social scientists, Dr. Failem asks his students to form triads of three people for discussion groups.
I have to admire the triple play in only four words: two redundancies and a misusage. A triad is a chord of three notes. (I wonder: If the triad has a short student in the middle, does that make it a minor triad?) So triads of three makes one misuse and one of the redundancies, and people makes the other. Unless he has some nonhumans in his class. Reading The Journal of Sociological Research makes me wonder.
We need to get Dr. Failem into the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired and teach him to say groups of three or trios.
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