Biographical Analysis of John Mcwhorter
Han Bin Kim
Comp II, Class B
Assignment 2, Draft 1
February 23, 2013
John McWhorter Interview
Over the years I have interviewed a good number of people, but there has never been anyone quite like John McWhorter. Upon reading the article “The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English” as published in the 2009 Fall edition of World Affairs, I found myself delighted by the mellow but powerful tone and the writer who could use it with such ease. Here was a man with brains, consideration, and humor. Lost in my reveries about what McWhorter would be like, I didn’t quite realize that I had somehow dialed his office number until a deep voice filtered through the receiver. “Yes? McWhorter speaking.” With a tingling sense of nervousness I had forgotten since my rookie days, I introduced myself and asked if he could spare time for a brief interview. He replied, “Interviews, my dear sir, are rarely brief,” and I could almost hear his smile. There was that brilliant wit which had inspired him to state that there were “no feminine-gendered tables that talk like Penelope Cruz.” (McWhorter, 251) After a turn or two of friendly wrangling, he gently suggested meeting Saturday afternoon at a quiet café we both knew. I agreed to the designated rendezvous and, unable to control the temptation, asked, “How long have you said café like that?” The way McWhorter pronounced the word was this: the ‘c’ was sweeter and lighter, in the way Italians and Spaniards speak, and the ‘f’ was said like a soft ‘p’—sounding simply foreign. He said simply, “Since I was very young.” I already knew that he had “taught himself languages as a hobby since childhood” (McWhorter, 247), and unsatisfied as I was with his answer, I vowed that Saturday would be a new day. On Saturday afternoon I drove down a peaceful country road and walked silently into the café. A tall man stood with his back to me, gazing out the large French window, and without prologue asked, “Isn’t that a beautiful poem right in
Comp II, Class B
Assignment 2, Draft 1
February 23, 2013
John McWhorter Interview
Over the years I have interviewed a good number of people, but there has never been anyone quite like John McWhorter. Upon reading the article “The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English” as published in the 2009 Fall edition of World Affairs, I found myself delighted by the mellow but powerful tone and the writer who could use it with such ease. Here was a man with brains, consideration, and humor. Lost in my reveries about what McWhorter would be like, I didn’t quite realize that I had somehow dialed his office number until a deep voice filtered through the receiver. “Yes? McWhorter speaking.” With a tingling sense of nervousness I had forgotten since my rookie days, I introduced myself and asked if he could spare time for a brief interview. He replied, “Interviews, my dear sir, are rarely brief,” and I could almost hear his smile. There was that brilliant wit which had inspired him to state that there were “no feminine-gendered tables that talk like Penelope Cruz.” (McWhorter, 251) After a turn or two of friendly wrangling, he gently suggested meeting Saturday afternoon at a quiet café we both knew. I agreed to the designated rendezvous and, unable to control the temptation, asked, “How long have you said café like that?” The way McWhorter pronounced the word was this: the ‘c’ was sweeter and lighter, in the way Italians and Spaniards speak, and the ‘f’ was said like a soft ‘p’—sounding simply foreign. He said simply, “Since I was very young.” I already knew that he had “taught himself languages as a hobby since childhood” (McWhorter, 247), and unsatisfied as I was with his answer, I vowed that Saturday would be a new day. On Saturday afternoon I drove down a peaceful country road and walked silently into the café. A tall man stood with his back to me, gazing out the large French window, and without prologue asked, “Isn’t that a beautiful poem right in