Howard Jacobson of the Independent lets Mona Baker have it with both barrels, pronouncing her "guilty of carrying out atrocities against language." The step-off point is her notorious employment of the phrase "some kind of Holocaust," but Jacobson combs through the entire would-be exculpation as well as her own language describing "current research interests." Conclusion: "everything Professor Baker says is worthy of our attention by virtue of its inanity." All this is no small criticism for a professor of language studies:
Academies are timid places, and because she has not behaved discourteously to a favoured group, Mona Baker won't face official censure. But if I were a school-leaver wondering where to study language in the autumn, I'd be thinking twice before going to an institution where at least one professor has a cloth ear, a closed mind, and does not grasp the meaning of simple terms in frequent use.