By Abdi Sultani,The citizen
Posted Sunday, November 3 2013 at 11:18
Posted Sunday, November 3 2013 at 11:18
In Summary
“Tanga Regional Commissioner Constantine Massawe has
warned the residents against taking the LAW INTO THEIR HANDS and
punishing suspects...”
In Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet of Monday,
October 28, a headline for a Page 1 story went thus: “Kikwete AGITATES
strategic learning”.
The reader who drew our attention to this one
wonders if it’s possible for a person to agitate an abstraction such as
“learning”.
Well, well… we’re only familiar with people
agitating FOR/AGAINST certain things/issues/causes. The preposition
“FOR/AGAINST is mandatory.
We checked our wordbook and here’s how it defines
“agitate”: argue energetically, especially in public, in order to
achieve a particular type of change.” It provides us with examples:
• The unions continue to agitate FOR change (not agitate change)
• As a young man, he agitated AGAINST the Vietnam war
Of course, the verb “agitate” can also be used in a
direct way (as transitive verb), but with a rather different meaning:
to make someone feel anxious and not calm. Examples:
• I didn’t want to AGITATE HER by talking while she listened to the morning news.
• Stella felt very AGITATED when her son failed to turn up for supper
Which is to say, (President) Kikwete agitated FOR
strategic learning; in other words, he rooted for/argued a case FOR
learning in a purposeful way.
While the scribbler in the elderly publication
MISSED a key preposition, a counterpart in a tabloid closely associated
with this columnist MISUSED one in a Sunday, October 27 story, entitled
“Why state schools don’t perform well”. He wrote:
“The paying of handsome salaries and other
incentives is not only limited FOR headmasters but also ordinary but
competent teachers.”
Read More: The Citizen
Read More: The Citizen
