Pedants' Favorite Grammar Rules are Probably Fake
daily.jstor.org
daily.jstor.org
There's of course truth to these statements, backed by a lot of linguistic research. Yet one has to be careful so as not to lean too much the other way. Using certain forms of language may be acceptable to your local peer group but may be a marker that others pick up on and label you.
As for "all usage is relative": I think the points pg makes in his essay "Taste for Makers" (http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html) are spot on (though he was talking in the context of art, beauty, and taste):
"Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things.
Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone's is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that's it."
Also, who cares if people label you for your use of language. Those people can get over themselves. Some of the linguistic tricks from those in the lowest rungs of society now dominate our discourse and it's because they didn't care.
But I also take your point. The problem--as is often the case with various forms of stereotyping--is that such preconceptions are simultaneously useful as indicators about a person you are dealing with (such as level of education), but also deserving of serious skepticism since they can have the effect of disadvantaging certain groups, cause you to miss interesting opportunities, and generally making life less interesting by enforcing a stultifying uniformity.
There are times in your life in which you need to speak with precision, and that means using generally agreed upon grammar and vocabulary. There's no harm in breaking those rules in everyday speech, but you should know them.
Theoretically true, but how far are you willing to go to defend this? E.g., how much less are you willing to earn per year? How much risk do you want to take for your children not getting into that school you have your eye on? What about getting that promotion "because the boss thinks you show promise"?
Having the benefit of the doubt is a powerful thing, and it makes or breaks decisions in or out of your favor every single day.
That is, assuming you're living in a society, of course. If you're crazy Chad in his forest cabin, then, by all means, talk to the spirits in any tongue you please.
In reality, everybody cares if people labels them, and for good reason, because we depend on collaboration with others for satisfying about 100% of needs, some of what are exact variants of "collaboration with others", like socialization.
Well said, have an upvote. Taking a global view really does put things in a different light. It reminds me of the old saw about atheists telling Christians:
"We're both Atheists, I just believe in one fewer God than you do".
When you step back and realize that there are thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of religions and deities, it is kinda eye opening. And you can apply that thinking to many (most?) things.
OTOH, if you do find any universal patterns shared across all (or most) human societies and cultures, then it probably means something important. :-)
As it stands, i don't care how you say the plural of octopus, but if you say something "begs the question" that better end your sentence, you plebe.
I've also mostly given up on "literally", which I think is worse, because it's now coming to mean its opposite.
The idea is that there are two groups of people, one holding to an original meaning, and one with a new usage. Sometimes the new meaning can be directly opposite the original meaning (e.g.: nonplussed), or just different (e.g., hopefully).
So, writers who wish to be understood cannot use "nonplussed," because readers will not know what is meant. A skunked term.
A longer explanation: http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2014/11/skunked-terms.htm...
"That's so bad!" meaning "That's awesome!"
If I can go on a tangent about poor terms...contranyms will throw people for a loop if they are unaware of one of the meanings. Or worse, if the sentence is constructed in a way meant to cause confusion.
"I would be bound for Chicago if I wasn't bound to this chair." [0]
"It is transparent that the transparent man cannot be seen." [1]
"Three people are left after five left." [2]
"If we go back two weeks, when Tom came back, we decided to push the date back three weeks." [3]
[0] I would be moving towards Chicago if I wasn't unable to move from this chair.
[1] It's visible to anyone that the invisible man cannot be seen.
[2] Three people remain after five departed.
[3] If you go into the past two weeks, when Tom returned, we decided then to push the date further by 3 weeks.
I had fun writing those.
As long as by "now" you mean, "over the last several hundred years":
My daily bread is literally implored I have no barns nor granaries to hoard;
John Dryden, The Hind and The Panther (1687)
Every day with me is literally another yesterday for it is exactly the same.
Alexander Pope, Letter to H. Cromwell (March 1708)
His looks were very haggard, and his limbs and body literally worn to the bone
Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1839)
If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.
Frances Brooke, The History of Emily Montague (1769)
I look upon it, Madam, to be one of the luckiest circumstances of my life, that I have this moment the honour of receiving your commands, and the satisfaction of confirming with my tongue, what my eyes perhaps have but too weakly expressed — that I am literally the humblest of your servants.
George Colman and David Garrick, The Clandestine Marriage (1766)
Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet.
James Joyce, The Dead (1914)
that he had shared her bedroom which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the a ssistance of a ladder in night apparel...
James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom wasliterally rolling in wealth.
Mark Twain, "The Adventure of Tom Sawyer" (1876)
All colors made me happy: even gray.
My eyes were such that literally they Took photographs.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)
Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847)
(try and disagree with me, some of my words mean the opposite of what I intend)
A better example is nice, which started bad (meaning "foolish" or "silly"), achieved a positive meaning in 18th century and on it's way down again ("How's my coding? It's nice.") Full story and some other interesting examples are here: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/10/change-in-word-me...
OK, can't help it, another interesting example. The word slut, of unknown origin, was first applied to men and then generally applied to kitchen maids with a mild negative meaning of slovenliness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slut, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=slut). There are other words starting with sl- that made a similar journey but are now fell out of use, e.g. slattern and slammerkin
I swear someone uses the word 'granular' about once every fortnight and I almost always have to ask what they mean because it's not usually obvious from the context.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts
Also, the colloquial meaning of "begs the question" doesn't always have a good alternative. Sometimes, a situation doesn't just "raise the question" like some tired bureaucrat raising his hand in a meeting. Sometimes, the question is too immediate and obvious to just be ignored. It's the elephant in the room. It cries out to be answered. It begs.
Allowing "begs the question" doesn't degrade the expressiveness and utility of the language, it improves it. This is unlike, for example, the misuse of "literally" (which results in there being no easy way to indicate that a statement should not be interpreted figuratively).
(This, by the way, is my personal test for whether a language rule is useful or not.)
I'd say that in every case that it is used in its classical sense when heard by person who uses it to mean "raises the question." Using "begs the question" that way is an actual mistake. One can have only heard "begs the question" used properly, but if you weren't familiar with the phrase, easily and understandably take it to mean "a question is begging to be asked", then go on to use it incorrectly.
Using the phrase "begs the question" incorrectly is probably only an hour younger than the phrase itself. Correcting someone about it without completely explaining its actual meaning (because you'd have to, at the least, explain the difference between formal and informal fallacies) is about a minute younger than that.
It's hard to make a case for it being language evolution if the incorrect usage is as old as the correct usage, and isn't growing any more than proportionally with it.
People being upset about being corrected about it isn't new either. People who use it correctly will continue to use it correctly, and people who use it incorrectly will use it correctly after they learn formal fallacies and can't think of a better, pithier way to describe that particular one.
Using it incorrectly, of course, is a sin akin to using an eggcorn (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/) : everybody has misheard or misunderstood many things, and then misuses them. The problem with finding them is that one has to use them in a conversation with someone nice enough or brave enough to correct one.
I'm not saying this is impossible, but I don't find it convincing. The formal usage is something that a person does, and is usually the end of a statement. ("You're begging the question.") The colloquial (not "incorrect") usage is something that a situation does. It is nearly always rendered in the third-person present tense and directly followed by the question it is introducing. ("Well, that begs the question: what do we do about it?").
I don't see how somebody could hear only the first version, and end up saying only the second version. I can see how someone could be confused the first time they hear the first version (i.e., "Wait, what question is he referring to?") and would need to have the term defined for them. But that's pretty much the definition of "jargon".
- "Assuming something big enough to obviate the question": e.g. "They said the searches were legal because they were limited to what was absolutely, but that just begs the question: what are they counting as necessary?"
- "Raises the question": this can be an case of the previous, but it can also be something like "They said the searches were legal, which begs the question of how often law enforcement is conducting searches under those criteria."
I think a better example of the point you're making is what the GP said about "literally" -- it's extremely useful to have a context-free indicator (just like e.g. specialized legal, military, or EMS jargon) that allows the listener not to have to guess. Using it as a generic intensifier then forces listener to guess when the whole point of such a word is to avoid that.
Even if "literally" is a lost cause, people should still coordinate on some word, but that doesn't work if they keep pushing each one down the intensifier treadmill.
Then it's kinda strange that the very same people who are promoting this non-prescriptivism are also rolling their eyes at the "literally-misuse-objectors" and dismissing their complains as baseless for the same reason.
Also, analogies provide explanation, not proof. You've not provided any justification for your opinion with your map analogy, you've just over-explained your opinion which everyone already understood.
But more fundamentally, he's wrong that taste being preference makes it impossible to get better at design. A big part of design -- as with any form of communication -- is understanding the particular audience you are targeting and how to address that audience. In design that means understanding the preferences in the target audience and how best to make tradeoffs among them to achieve the effect you want -- whether it's too maximize appeal to a narrow group with cohesive preferences or a broad group with divers preferences. You can get better at that even though taste if preference.
You may not be able to reduce the practical skill involved readily to simple mechanical rules, but for designers that's a good thing if true -- it means it'll be hard to automate then away.
In contrast, David Foster Wallace's essay "Authority and American Usage" (pdf: http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag...) is an excellent, though lengthy, discussion of these issues. I can't recommend it enough to anyone interested in these sorts of things.
I can't find the exact quote but in Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky makes some statement about how the ability for any person to speak, use, invent, modify, evolve language proves that everyone, not just a select few, are inherently creative and intelligent. We just don't always harness it. Of course, there are some limits to that statement (Chomsky would know that more than anyone else), but it rings true.
The idioms and phrases that we deem correct today were incorrect at some point in the past and there are phrases that sound wrong now which will be perfectly natural in the future. Being a pedant is a waste of time, what's more: it stifles creativity.
As a small example, I constantly see "bias" used in place of "biased" and "dominate" used in place of "dominant" online, usually in discussions about sports. I hate those uses every single time I see them (especially the latter because the spelling/sounds don't even match), but I've come to realize that language will often simplify itself and take shortcuts, and that may be what's happening here.
What would be really interesting is to track the evolution of language, which you could do online very well, even perhaps arriving to the origin of certain words/phrases, etc.
It's really a fascinating topic if you can let your own bias get out of the way.
They usually have a segment about tracking the origins of certain words/phrases, often to a regional dialect. And they have segments about pet peeves or settling grammar disputes, e.g., between spouses.
Listening to the show has helped my pedantic tendencies. I still think it's important to know the current established, mainstream grammar rules and vocabulary, but it's also important to understand that language is always evolving and highly dependent upon context.
Code is written with two kinds of readers in mind: the computer and other humans. Prose is written just for humans.
With code, there is a very precise set of rules determining whether the code will be readable by a computer. There is no correspondingly precise set of rules for understandability by humans.
I can see the analogy between PEP 8 and grammar rules, but I think there's an important distinction in the provenance of those rules. PEP 8 is a formal proposal adopted by the BDFL. There is no mechanism for submitting or approving formal proposals for English grammar rules. So the spoken language is always the authority on what's correct and what isn't.
Yes, but to some extent that's a peculiarity of English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators.
I don't think the fact that code is also meant to be read by a computer is relevant in this context. But let's take another example if that doesn't work for you: the novel Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. It's written in a phonetic Edinburgh style. By 'normal' english standards, it doesn't make any sense. If someone was to write in the same style way without any knowledge of English grammar and spelling, you would just assume they couldn't spell. But that's why, in the context of a novel written by a talented author, it's actually a great bit of prose. I could give thousands of other examples.
As a language freak (and polyglot by the way) I have found out that one should develop his own language and in fact he/she's gonna do it anyway, the only choise - consciously or not. I've choosen to constantly improve my language and I like this decision, I've seen how big is language's influence on speaker. It's just like an operating system for computer.
On the other hand if you want communicate efficiently you must accept the fact that everybody have own word meanings and speak a little differently and you should adapt to it. Another thing is relation language-subconsciousness, I belive there's very broad influence. Those factors that make caring about language worth. By the way conforming national standard is not the best way: "who's language - he/she rules", so if you want to rule, you need your personal.
As usual, we need to find the golden mean.
Perhaps, there is some value in segmenting test-takers in their ability to learn and apply an arbitrary set of rules in place of their own. But, perhaps not.
"I need a lead-acid battery, fifty units of plasma, some bolt cutters, and something called a - Defrimbulator?"
"That's a made-up word."
"They're all made up."
I need to speak in a clear way for others to understand me. That may not mean speaking how my English teachers in public school expected me to.
It's like starting a company. You have an idea, a product, but you have to build custom scaffolding, engineering, human resources. Whatever. There may be some common patterns/idioms one can rely on for guidance, but you'll rarely ever cling to them religiously.
Which is, IMO (though backed by academic research as well), where a lot of this pedantry originates. Humans and their long history of forcing our personal notions of right/wrong on each other.
It's ideas like this article, and this ensuing discussion that prop up my hope that we'll maybe, possibly, start realizing it's bullshit. Instead of saying "Hey, do it my way." we'll start asking how we can be of use.
Now I need to take a shower.
As an example of the latter, based loosely on a real example:
It is preferred to take the server to run-level 1 then to reboot.
In operational-readiness documents there really must not be any leeway for confusion or ambiguity, yet I've encountered many such examples. The usual retort of 'language evolves!' doesn't hold true in circumstances where a common, unequivocal meaning is required.
You'd think programmers would be aware of that, writing strictly-defined grammar all day long!
Regarding language being about communication, I think a subtlety is often missed: what are we communicating? our choice of linguistic conventions communicates a lot about the community we identify with, our status, age, etc.
What's the value of a community writing them down in a book and teaching them rote like, en mass, when they already know them and hand them down organically to their kids?
Attempting to do so quickly devolves into "right/wrong" thinking. Which is the exact opposite of what this article and volumes of academic research suggest is reality.
If you encounter a language barrier, figure it out with those folks. Oh noes, human interaction! Just read this book instead and come back to me when you're on a level.
OK, so I'm being glib, but the point is obvious; just talk to people.
Really, you're saying that written communication should just be ineffective if every missive needs to be followed with a conversation to be understood.
...
</sarcasm>
I say absolutely not. If you can correct someone, then you must understand them.
But hating "grammar nazis" is something everyone loves to do, and feeling mentally superior is something that the HN community loves to feel, so articles like this get up-votes while people who want to stay on-topic get down-votes.
But, oh well, just another step towards the degradation of this community and its content. NBD.