[Note: yes, I changed the title on this post. I actually thought of this title last night, but I couldn't remember it when it came time to actually post. So the original title went in as a placeholder until inspiration re-struck.]
So, it turns out that I get made fun of sometimes, which probably comes as no surprise to most of you. I'm usually happy to laugh at myself, but often these attacks are unfair and petty--I'll use a word too large for my audience, and ridicule follows (I get it; sometimes people are insecure, and maybe sometimes I'm unintentionally intimidating. I'm sorry about that, and I've even gone to considerable lengths to avoid it, but there's nothing I can do to help your problem; you need learn to believe in yourself, just like the last scene in all movies!). But sometimes the ridicule is justified. Recently I was made fun of by a friend for using a semicolon in a text message. I'm not sure that I feel guilty, exactly, but I have to admit that this act was completely mockable: only a laughably curmudgeonly prescriptivist would go to all that trouble just to avoid a comma splice.
You read correctly: today is the day we talk about prescriptivism!
The prescriptivist/descriptivist debate perennially pits high school-vintage grammar snobs against college-educated linguists. Simply put, prescriptivists argue that a language is a collection of officially-defined words which are ordered into sentences and paragraphs according to standardized rules. In other words, language is defined by its rules, and "correct" usage simply follows those rules. I admit that I harbor prescriptivist leanings. I believe that correct usage increases the precision and concision of language, thus making written communication more effective. I appreciate it when objective pronouns are rendered 'whom', when the subjunctive is used properly, and, yes, when comma splices are mended with a simple semicolon.
[Side note: any grammar or usage mistakes in this post are placed there intentionally. For irony!]
Linguists, who are almost universally descriptivists, point out that prescriptivism is largely a modern phenomenon. Language has evolved continuously ever since its advent, and it's only been in the last few hundred years that, with a high literacy rates and the ubiquity of print, it's even been possible to standardize language. Since rich, complex languages existed before prescriptivist rulesets--the average Roman, for example, didn't run around worrying about the difference between the indicative and imperative moods--the languages must therefore not be defined by such rulesets. You can make a sort of Platonic argument: the true language exists independent of the ruleset, thus the ruleset only approximates the language as actually used.
Despite my prescriptivist bias, I'm forced to accept the logic of the descriptivist argument. On one hand, prescriptivist standardization facilitates communication. On the other hand, descriptivists are obviously right in that language transcends standardization. Pure prescriptivism gives us the boorish grammatical hair-splitter; pure descriptivism gives us teh intertubes.
Given my penchant for reconciling conflicting viewpoints (yes, kids, I'm inviting you to read my thesis; while you're at it, if you could cite it in your academic work, that would really help me out), allow me to postulate some common ground: what prescriptivists and descriptivists really care about is that, rather than just spouting out words, we think about language as we use it. A prescriptivist, I argue, doesn't care so much that I use quotation marks as dictated by the Chicago Manual of Style, but that I pay attention to the issues when making choices with punctuation. A descriptivist doesn't really advocate wildly ungrammatical writing, but simply points out that a consistent definition of 'grammatical' is a chimera. So, I can use "standard" usage to write as precisely as possible, while acknowledging that language is inherently fluid and mutable.
Phew. Problem solved.
6 comments:
yes.
speaking of theses, i went (and drove my committee) mad trying to reconcile the university's basic style and format requirements, with the rather detailed prescriptions in the student handbook put out by my department, not to mention chicago and the style conventions of classics and biblical studies.
Actually, descriptivists are just uneducated. They try to legitimize or validify their putrescent prose and inability to communicate with educated people by claiming their form of communication is superior or at least effective. They add that we must accept the colloquialisms of all communities to avoid ethnocentricism (this is another argument for another time). It is only effective because of the deplorable state of functional literacy throughout the world. Yes, long ago when man had no formal lingual education, man communicated adequately, but now we are able to communicate more and deeper meaning than Cletus (the slack-jawed yokel) ever could.
Actually Matt, your "big words" often came across as degrading to me. I have always know you are intelligent, but you insistance on throwing out words you are certain will be unfamiliar is a bit irritating.
g: I was fortunate. The EE department at BYU had a standard template that conformed to everyone's standards. Is yours filed in the online thesis library?
P: I disagree. Most descriptivists are linguists who are quite well-educated and perfectly capable of standard writing. They DO tend to argue (or at least the Chomskyists do) that language is universal and thus all dialects are equally "good". We could argue about that (and I have my own mixed feelings about it), but it's not just an excuse to cover up for their own shortcomings.
M: Do you really think that I sit around thinking of big words so I can throw them out and feel smart? (I'll save you the trouble: I don't.) In conversation I speak off the top of my head, and my vocabulary is actually quite tame by most standards. I'm sorry when I intimidate people, and I've even tried watering things down in order to put people at ease, but it doesn't really work and makes me feel simultaneously guilty and awkward, so I've stopped.
Regardless of (or should I say irregardless)if you sit around and think of your big words, or if they are just a part of your superior self, that doesn't change the way it makes me feel. It is a good thing you can mingle with your intellectual friends and not have to lower your standards too often.
Yet intentions matter when we judge actions. If a person goes out of his way to make people feel smaller than him, then he deserves what he gets. When he goes out of his way to avoid that, and it happens anyways, it's another story entirely.
As I've said for years, I'm genuinely sorry when I intimidate people. I rarely intend to, I usually go out of my way to avoid it, and on the whole I think I'm pretty successful. But I reject the idea that I should accept others' ridicule--or worse, their guilt trips--so they can make themselves feel better.
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