I still think “live gigs” is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in print and I see it all the time. Grrrr!
Why isn’t “raises the question” or, if you must, “raises the obvious question”, a legitimate equivalent for the descriptivist usage?
I take issue with that. I use it in its true sense fairly regularly.
People use it to mean “exactly” when it should mean “by itself.”
Correct use: The fact that I skipped class wasn’t the issue per se, but rather that I skipped class and lied about it as well.
Incorrect use: She wasn’t angry about it, per se, but she was disappointed.
So if you can’t replace per se with by itself, you’re using it incorrectly. Or at least you’re not being true to its original meaning.
It’s probably because I’m a stick-in-the-mud English teacher, but the ad populum argument for incorrect usage of words and phrases really bugs me. A bunch of people doing it doesn’t mean it’s right. (Yeah, language is a social contract and arbitrary anyway blahblahblah. Derrida was never my favorite philosopher.)
Do you call it a “debate” when the occasional creationist comes to the Dope to get their well-deserved smack down?
It’s not any different here. One side has the proper methodological framework in which to view questions on linguistic correctness, as well as plenty of facts to back up their determinations, while the other side has their usage “Bible” which they blindly follow while almost entirely oblivious to the realities of the world as it actually functions. You certainly can call this a debate, just as the creationists like to open GD threads as if there’s doubt on the subject, but I don’t believe that’s the most beneficial way of describing the situation.
Whenever someone like HazelNutCoffee mistakenly comes in to call it a mis-usage, I’m not debating anything. They are wrong, full stop, end of story. It’s not a misusage, it’s not improper, it’s not incorrect. When someone like Mangetout comes in claiming that there’s a “proper” definition, we need to decipher exactly what proper means in this context, because 99% of the time, proper is exactly equivalent to “people like me don’t like it”, which is a laughably ridiculous criterion to determine the correctness conditions of a language. I had to snirk at the communist quip, though, so I don’t know how serious Mangetout was arguing.
I just call it “circular reasoning” to avoid petitio principii. The Latin is a bit too fancy for my tastes. If we have English language fallacies like the “strawman”, which the disingenuous Safire blithely employs in his little essay, then we might as well use English. And, really, which phrase makes it more clear what we’re talking about: “circular reasoning” or “begging the question”?
It is better to leave a begged question unanswered than attempt to answer it when it’s full.
I think much of the debate has been well fleshed out.
Part of the problem with “begs the question” is that, in plain English, it simply doesn’t obviously lead you to think “a statement that assumes the truth of what it is supposed to prove.” “Begs the question” sounds and reads like “raises an unasked question,” the way most people use it.
Perhaps it was easier in the original Latin; maybe “petito principii” implies what it means to someone who understands that language.
I qualified my statement by saying you’re not being true to its original meaning. And you’re not. The argument here then becomes whether “being true to its original meaning” necessarily equates being correct. When the OED starts listing the definition of “per se” as “exactly,” then I’ll cheerfully change my mind.
As an aside, I can’t believe you’re equating prescriptivists with creationists. What a ridiculous analogy.
That does sound annoying! I don`t think I’ve ever noticed it being used that way though. I wonder if I’ve been misunderstanding people’s intended, albeit mangled, use of per se all these years. That wouldn’t be a particularly good endorsement of the descriptivist “you can understand the intended meaning” argument, would it?
Damn. I thought that someone had discovered a new subatomic particle.
Irregardless, of you’re fine points, I ain’t going to begin thinking common usage means correct usage. Or we will end up here.
Another problem, when using “per se” as a postpositive adjective, people will frame it with commas; however, “per se” requires no punctuation.
Then the prescriptivists I know are worse off than I thought, and I need to learn to fact-check my shit. :smack:
Thanks for the correction. Rest of the point still stands.
This begs the questions-why is 6.35cm of fun stealing BrainGlutton’s schtick?
Nope, sorry. Aside from irregardless and ain’t (the latter of which I believe to be entirely correct and acceptable in all but formal registers, and if you’re going to complain about the former you might as well rant about inflammable too), all your examples in this quote are errors related to orthography and punctuation. Writing is not and never will be the same as speech and should not be held to the same rules. Writing is a manufactured tool with standardized rules to enhance readability while speech is an entirely natural human ability that adapts and evolves no matter how you struggle against the tide.
To be fair, for the longest time I always thought it meant “exactly” or “strictly speaking” because that’s how everyone around me used it. It wasn’t until grad school that I realized the common usage was actually a mis-usage.
I suppose it doesn’t really matter if people understand each other. I’m not going to stop someone in conversation and tell them they’re wrong. I’m just saying that I, personally, find it annoying. Also academics tend to be nitpicky about stuff like that, so when I write a paper it’s just safer to stick to the OED when it comes to things like this, rather than popular usage. Yeah, we live in an ivory tower. Get off our lawn!
I dunno about that. Quite a few prescriptivists seem to think you’re a worse person for not knowing the difference between who and whom or the ‘real’ use of begging the question or per se, while quite a few Christians seem to think you’re a worse person for not going to church on Sundays.
Both groups (and here I expand it to not just Christians but religious devotees) have a set of rules that ostensibly instruct someone how to be a better person, but knowing these rules are not necessary to being able to speak English or exist in general.
EDIT: Further, as the notion of a god may peacefully coexist with the fact that the Earth is part of a heliocentric system, so too can prescriptivist rules such as how to properly use “begging the question” coexist with how English is commonly used. They have their places; I for one would never dare use begging the question in its common usage in a formal logic debate, for example. The trouble comes when the prescriptivist rules get thrust on people, the mavens saying “THIS is how you must speak or you are not speaking English at all!” It’s very similar to zealots saying “THIS is how you must live your life or you are not a good person!”
So your argument is that rules of writing do not adopt and evolve?
Both written and spoken language evolve. And they should; however, they should not evolve in illogical ways.
I, also, disagree with your view that writing is a manufactured tool while speech is a natural ability. Vocalization may be a natural ability, but our spoken language is not. It is just as manufactured as writing.
Are the following all correct to you, Bosstone?
for all intensive purposes
getting untracked
you’ve got another thing coming
it’s a mute point
tough road to hoe
towing the line
chomping at the bit
I’m not sure how creationism is related to going to Church on Sunday. Not all people who go to church are creationists, and I suspect some creationists are lazy and don’t go. I’d rather relate the descriptivist position to creationism - it is wrong, but don’t complain because lots of people believe in it.
My complaint is that it is misused by the type of person who picks up a nifty sounding new term without bothering to find out what it really means. I suspect most of the people who misuse it don’t understand the true meaning, since they couldn’t find their way through a logical argument with a flashlight and a map. What is wrong with “raises the question” which could be used in the quotes given in the OP. Sure we can understand what the misusers are saying, but in the world today if you don’t have the ability to decode the mouthings of an illiterate you’re going to have a hard time.
And I don’t misuse “hopefully” either, so there.
Nope. Those are homophone errors. They sound almost exactly like the correct saying when said out loud, but are different when written down. They’re no different from writing “I went to meat him.”
Now that’s a landmine I refuse to step on. I’ve learned a while back not to get too invested in these conversations to preserve my own sanity and time, so I’m not going there.
But if people now say “it’s a mute point” (which they do, and which sounds different than ‘moot point,’ by the way), and if people now write “for all intensive purposes” (which they also do), then at some point it stops being a homophone error and becomes an accepted alternative. Doesn’t it?