&#62;He wove a lot of observations into the piece.<p>In what sense were they "observations"? I did see a lot of assertions about people's use of language that weren't backed up by any data, but I didn't see any observations.<p>&#62;Hitchens is a man of letters, not an academic linguist.<p>I guess my question would be whether you'd be equally happy if he wrote in the same style about (say) physics, geology or programming. Is there something special about language that makes it unnecessary for commentators to know anything about their subject?<p>And really, the article is about <i>like</i>, for goodness sake. There are literally thousands of grumpy, contentless articles of this sort written over the past couple decades.