Calling pedants, teachers, wordsmiths and class warriors.

[shylock]

I have a question.

actually, snowleopard, the scienticically defined 'ideal face' looks exactly like liz hurley. i'm not sure if that undermines your point or supports it...

I knew this would happen with a pedant thread. What's John Prescott got to do with it?

Blimey, that post was a bit rude Anna. I'll see if I can come up with something really special and coherent for you later.

no need to be so rude to SL, anna.

Eh, I think snowleapord is making plenty of sense. The 'beauty' of any given dialect is pretty subjective, and class-related.

Prezza is my shagpiece - in a world of subjective beauty.

Facial human beauty is not entirely subjective, it's true - we want symmetrical faces with particular ratios between the facial features.

Mulls ... There needs to be a word, I think, like counterpoint or subplot, or maybe something to do with weaving, for the parallel-universe-effect of the interwoven chatroom thread digression.

I know that's what they say, but I'm convinced it's arse. few of us have symmetrical faces, including many of the (as widely agreed upon) most beautiful people in the world. My DP has a wonky face and he is a handsome rogue.

Ken Clarke's mine

You can 'ave him!

oops, I forgot to add the

tsk, snowleopard... have him.

Scientific evidence that our sense of beauty is distorted by political correctness? Really, Anna?

Absolutely, since political correctness has encouraged the ignorant to buy into the idea of non-art, much of which is repulsively ugly

[ignores row going on all around her that broke out while typing long and now irrelevant post]

Come on Bink... I'm sure we can do something with 'web' and '[inter-]weaving'.... There MUST be a word for this...

yeah, she read it in a magazine. wot's your point, kaffy?

I was hoping for some kind of reference to a research paper actually Anna!

What, pray tell, is "non-art"? How does one differentiate it from "art"?

And I'm still waiting for the scientific bit.

(Are the 'ignorant', the same people who have ugly accents?)

Read Robert Winston's excellent books The Human Mind and Human Instinct where you will find plenty of scientific references in a digestible format

pmsl at 'digestible format'.

I think that when averaged out, the majority of people prefer semetrical faces, but that does not make the individual assessment of beauty or ugliness any less subjective.

It's a bit like saying it is an absolute truth that everyone prefers carrots to spinach. Whilst the majority of people might prefer carrots to spinach, each individual can still have widely varying views.

So to link back to the OP - whilst the dialect/grammatical errors they used grate on the majority of people, it does not mean that some people will not see them as beautiful. And since beauty is oft said to be in the eye of the beholder, one might assume that these people are more likely than not to come from Essex

Anna is frequently rude to people ime!

Dunno Aitchyouberk.

Actually I love Essex accents because I am from there. When I hear someone pronounce 'th' as 'f' I go all warm and fuzzy, as if contemplating shagging John Prescott.

Hmmm, the bits of Winston I've seen haven't seemed very scientific to me.

I'm reasonably up to date on political correctness, I think, but I missed the bit where 'racism is bad' became 'non-art is good'.

Notquitecockney - come on, he's one of the great scientists of our time because he sees the big picture and synthesises huge amounts of seemingly disparate scientific research. And he got a peerage for his contribution to our society...