Does descriptive linguistics mean "anything goes"?

In My Humble Opinion
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Not sure how we got into this digression about music, but now that we’ve established that anyone critical of illiteracy must be an out-of-touch classist who hates language, let’s move on. :roll_eyes:

I think virtually everyone here is familiar with Steven Pinker, and I want to talk about him for a moment.

Pinker is a renowned linguist and cognitive psychologist. Among his many books is The Language Instinct, a wonderfully informative and accessible book about our innate capacity for language, an endorsement of Chomsky’s hypothesis of a universal grammar, and a spirited defense of descriptive linguistics. Indeed, one could hardly find a more staunch defender of descriptivism than Pinker, as the article Grammar Puss published in the New Republic in 1994 vividly illustrates.

What I like about Pinker’s approach to descriptivism – though I don’t always agree with everything he says – is that it’s analytical. He argues, for instance, that a sentence like “me and Alice went to the movies” should not be criticized as grammatically incorrect, not because many of us speak that way, but because it’s actually quite consistent with established rules of grammar. By the same token, he’s quick to dismiss phraseology like “thank you for inviting Alice and I” as ridiculous hyper-correction.

That said, I think it’s noteworthy that Pinker is also a strong and eloquent advocate of good writing. His book The Sense of Style is both a brilliant argument for it and in itself a fine exemplar of the craft.

And that, folks, like it or not, believe it or not, is the entirety of my point here. Specifically, in the introduction to the book, Pinker writes that there are three important reasons that we should strive to write well, though he chooses to call it “style”. But in my view, only one of those reasons is really about style, and it’s the one I mentioned before; in his words:

Style, not least, adds beauty to the world. To a literate reader, a crisp sentence, an arresting metaphor, a witty aside, an elegant turn of phrase are among life’s greatest pleasures.

But the first two reasons are plainly about the importance of good writing, with an eye for logical sentence structure and correct grammar and punctuation. The reasons he gives are the following:

  • … it ensures that writers will get their messages across, sparing readers from squandering their precious moments on earth deciphering opaque prose. When the effort fails, the result can be calamitous …

  • … [it] earns trust. If readers can see that a writer cares about consistency and accuracy in her prose, they will be reassured that the writer cares about those virtues in conduct they cannot see as easily. Here is how one technology executive explains why he rejects job applications filled with errors of grammar and punctuation: “If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use ‘it’s’, then that’s not a learning curve I’m comfortable with.”

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“Correlation”? The whole point of the article is about the direct linkage between poor literacy and poor economic outcomes.

And no, I don’t believe that culture and society exist mainly (or only) to serve economic interests. But I do believe that economic strength is one of the indicators of the success of a society, and moreover, an enabler of other important social achievements like art, culture, and general quality of life.

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No, the article is about a study establishing that there is a correlation, and claiming that since controlling for a few measurable factors doesn’t erase the correlation, simply increasing literacy would increase GDP. It’s the kind of nonsense economists do all the time. There’s absolutely unmeasured factors contributing to both reduced income and reduced literacy, and even ignoring that it’s not like increasing everyone’s literacy would eliminate the need for, e.g. sanitation workers, or necessarily lead to increased salaries for those workers.

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It’s also noteworthy that Pinker has never expressed his opinions on elegant style in writing in this manner:

Nor has Pinker ever made the suggestion that the language is in decline such that clarity of communication is at risk - in fact, as a linguist with respect for empirical data, he refutes such ridiculous claims.

The fact that your conscious intent is not classist/racist does not refute the fact that your ingrained attitude to language does, in fact, amount to the promotion of a supremacist monoculture.

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The capitalist/American myth that everyone of us can college our way out of poverty together, and every one of us can be a scientist, astronaut, or adjunct professor of literature.

And the conclusions in that article are fundamentally nonsense. It claims that low literacy levels are the cause not just of individual poverty (which, again, is a “fact” that is questionable at best), but that if only everyone read better then we would magically no longer need the services provided by those in low-paying jobs, or that we’d suddenly start paying checkout clerks more money because they read at a higher level.

And, to bring us back around to the question at hand, I don’t understand the position that one particular version of English, written or spoken, is inherently better.

What I do believe is that part of succeeding socially is being able to understand shared cultural references, behavioral idiosyncrasies, and communicate comfortably amongst the group. So, from that standpoint, speaking the dialect of the dominant group is “better” for the individual, but only because the dominant group is going to accept or reject you based on how well they feel you fit.

Maintaining that there is one correct form of language while the others are broken in some way is 100% about the dominant group maintaining cultural and economic control over others.

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Also speaking and understanding the dialect of the group allows you to communicate more effectively with them, which what you are wanting to accomplish.

Another proviso: the group that counts as dominant and the exact variation we use varies sometimes several times within a day. A physician presenting a case at a conference will use words and constructions that they would not use while out with friends, which may be different than on a date, which will be different than when parenting their preschooler. Writing a report or an opinion piece will call for different styles than sending a text. None of them are the correct usage. Or necessarily incorrect.

And that is not overwhelming to navigate in most, but not all, contexts. A difficulty occurs when the audience has varied elements and different members have different thoughts about whether one form is or should be dominant in the context.

I do believe that being able to naturally use the dialect of the more educated elite without pretension allows one to function in an environment of educated elites effectively. And that that dialect is changing faster than some prescriptivists would like.

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I also feel like I should add . . . emotionally, I want everyone to be more sophisticated and steeped in the ‘traditional’ literary culture of America. I wish more people understood more things more deeply, and questioned more introspectively. I wish more people used bigger words, and more semi-colons, and and and . . .

But, I recognize that at its core what all that boils down to is “I wish people were more like me (or more like how I imagine myself to be)”, which is based on the presumption that I am somehow the pinnacle of how a person should be. :stuck_out_tongue:

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They publish various style guides to keep things consistent (e.g., The Chicago Manual of Style). Not that I usually pay attention to such things :slight_smile: [ETA that is a bit of a lie… it is not bad to be somewhat familiar with popular style manuals, even if one does not slavishly follow them.] But one may be forced to, for instance if you wanted to publish something through the University of Chicago Press.

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Ah the semicolon.

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Yes. Specific style guides for specific circumstances; rules for specific contexts that may be different than in even another highly educated context.

Notice the semicolon! :smiley:

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I have to conclude that you’re so invested in your argument that you’re just not seeing – or at least not acknowledging – the fact that I quoted Pinker making essentially the exact same points that I did. When he says that good writing “ensures that writers will get their messages across, sparing readers from squandering their precious moments on earth deciphering opaque prose” he is making precisely the same point about the difficulty of deciphering bad writing, and how susceptible it is to misinterpretation.

As for the claim that “the language is in decline such that clarity of communication is at risk”, that isn’t my claim (though I did, separately, quote John McWhorter on the decline of language since the 60s). I’m not persuaded that the language is actually in decline; the point I’m making is that poor language skills and misuses of language are what puts clarity of communication at risk, which I attribute (correctly, I think) to some combination of ignorance, carelessness, or laziness.

Again, Pinker says essentially the same thing when he states that good writing earns trust, that “if readers can see that a writer cares about consistency and accuracy in her prose, they will be reassured that the writer cares about those virtues in conduct they cannot see as easily”. He quotes a technology executive explaining “why he rejects job applications filled with errors of grammar and punctuation”. Indeed, I would not hire someone who demonstrates, right in their job application, “some combination of ignorance, carelessness, or laziness”.

Maybe not every one of us, but a great many more could have successful, productive careers given the opportunity to acquire the right skills, and something much better than a sixth grade level of literacy has to be part of that. I’m reminded that when I visited Xerox PARC in the 70s – the research center that pioneered much of the technology of the modern PC – one of their researchers was a young woman who had originally been hired as a secretary. But she abounded in curiosity, initiative, and intelligence, and soon became part of the Alto team, only because they were enlightened enough to give her the opportunity.

Let me ask you something that may seem like a digression, but I don’t think it is. With the plague of Trumpism sweeping America, one thing I’ve noticed is how consistently and appallingly uninformed his supporters are. What would you guess their literacy levels are? Do you think these people are avid readers of the New Yorker, the Atlantic, or the New York Times? Is it just coincidence that their orange hero himself is famously averse to reading, and can’t even compose a tweet without mangling the language?

Is it just possible that there is, not just a correlation, but a causal relation between higher levels of literacy and a better society?

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Have you noticed that many of the people in the driver’s seat of Trumpism have degrees from Ivy League schools? Have you noticed that there are high brow institutions and publications dedicated to publish erudite defenses for Trumpian politics?

Is it possible a push for “literacy” would improve society? Certainly. But there is also plenty of evidence that it’s a hypothesis that’s difficult to test and has obvious counter evidence in current society.

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At risk of digressing down this rat hole, I’ll just say that I think that most of these people – and that includes many politicians – are exploiters rather than victims, exploiting the rubes either for personal gain or for ideological reasons. It’s the rubes being victimized that I’m mainly talking about. But let’s not get too caught up in Trumpism here.

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Really maintaining that there is one correct form of language is only bad language knowleges.
In order for communication to be effective, it is important that the participants are able to understand each other. This can be difficult when there are language barriers, or when people misuse words. For example, if someone does not know the meaning of a word, they may interpret it in the wrong way. Similarly, if someone uses a word incorrectly, it can change the meaning of what they are trying to say. This can lead to misunderstandings and frustration on both sides. In order to avoid these problems, it is important to make sure that everyone has a good understanding of the language being used. This can be achieved through education and training.
Sooo… politics has nothing to do with it

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I personally believe that such is the case. My having that belief however does not support the conclusion that higher literacy has a direct impact on GDP rising all boats.

Mind you I personally think that is also more true than not: a more highly educated workforce attracts more industry that relies on a highly educated workforce, which tend to pay more. But correlation controlling for a handful of factors is not conclusive proof to me.

And in any case I do not believe that diversity in dialects and usage within a country necessarily results in or from low literacy. Failing to use adverbs as I learned was proper does not Tower of Babel make.

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I have no problem with diversity, despite some here trying to accuse me of classism with even an implication of some sort of linguistic racism or class supremacy. I’m fascinated by the dialects of different regions of Canada and the US. I think that some here are exhibiting the fallacy of the excluded middle; there is a very vast gap between silly prescriptivism like the infamous prohibition against ending a sentence with a preposition, and on the other extreme, outright functional illiteracy.

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William Strunk, Jr. (who used to be William Strunk, Jr. but modern usage guides take out the comma: o tempora! o mores!) taught English at Cornell for 46 years. In 1918 he grew so infuriated at the lack of precision in his students’ writing that he composed a “little book,” literally a vade macum (“something a person carries about for frequent or regular use”), to provide rules he expected them to adhere to. In 1957, after he mentioned it in The New Yorker, his former pupil E. B. White was asked to revise and expand it. The little book has since sold over 10,000,000 copies.

Several good lessons rise from this history. The primary one is who wrought Strunk’s wrath. He taught at Cornell, one of the most prestigious colleges in America. Even if sons of rich daddies proliferated, these young men cannot be called anything other than the upper-class elite. Many, if not most, had attended elite private schools. Yet Strunk considered their command of the English language so lacking he felt compelled to pay out of his pocket for the printing of a guide containing both rules and style suggestions. (It was later officially published.)

If the top 1% of the top 1% of American students in 1918, a presumed Golden Age, could not write a concise, elegant English sentence then it is beyond puzzling that today anyone would expect better from the next 0.99% or the 49% following them.

A different way of analyzing Strunk is to ask whether his advice was linguistically sound or even sensible, coming from a man who forced the campus newspaper to use his coinage “studentry” rather than “student body.” Many say no.

Geoffrey Pullum, professor of linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, and co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002), said that:

The book's toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules ... It's sad. Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write however or than me or was or which, but can't tell you why.

Pullum has argued, for example, that the authors misunderstood what constitutes the passive voice, and he criticized their proscription of established and unproblematic English usages, such as the split infinitive and the use of which in a restrictive relative clause. On Language Log, a blog about language written by linguists, he further criticized The Elements of Style for promoting linguistic prescriptivism and hypercorrection among Anglophones, and called it “the book that ate America’s brain”.

Strunk & White is the epitome of a little learning being a dangerous thing. Yet I’ve defended it on the Dope as a reasonable set of guidelines that will in fact tighten up one’s language and make it more readable, even if you need to skip over the “rules” for the suggestions. Saying that people who want to improve the quality of their writing can benefit from guidelines is far from insisting that only one elite set of rules and styles is permissible.

That the elite of Cornell college students be held to a high standard is perfectly understandable. Few of the rest of humanity are elite, writing for professors, or exchanging deathless prose that must be revised over and over to achieve perfection. Formal writing is not all writing. Complaining that not all writing meets its standards is much like complaining that farm tractors don’t meet the standards of Formula 1 race cars. Each vehicle serves its own purpose. The wise observer sees the difference and does not impose one on the other.

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isn’t the domain of descriptive linguistics.

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I’d argue it goes as only as far as saying that a more literate society has a greater potential capacity for total economic output.

Whether greater literacy will in fact be harnessed to greater economic output is an open question. But one I tend toward thinking will tend towards doing so.

And even then, teaching 19th Century Lit to the second decile is far less effective at raising economic potential than is teaching Reader’s Digest-level literacy to the bottom decile. Which decidedly is not the direction to bet given the nature of a capitalist trickle-down economic system. We will systemically invest not in the low-hanging fruit, but in the well-connected fruit. To our collective detriment.

Finally, whether the fruits of that improved productivity flow to the more-literate workers or to the ruling / owning class is a very different question. One whose which history gives only one answer: “Good luck, workers!”

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Yes, and it’s called editing. It’s called house style. As a professional editor on the side, in a relationship with a very professional editor, there’s a bright line between linguistics and prestige language standards. Some branches of linguistics do study the phenomena of language standardization. They never confuse this with the science of linguistics per se. It’s a sociolinguistic subdiscipline.