So possibly a more FQ item for the linguistic nerds in the house …
Given that whatever is considered “standard” language evolves. Are there any metrics regarding the typical rate of that change? Obviously casual, slang, and subcultural language evolves more quickly. At least historically.
So for example over the course of my adult lifetime I have noted that unmodified adjectives are increasingly used as adverbs, not just in everyday speech but by those reporting on serious news shows, a “space” in word usage is often monitored for approved style.
My impression is that the rate of change for “standard” language is faster than even a generation ago, but I wonder if that impression has any real basis?
(A recent spreading usage that annoys me that I’ve heard increasing is when a speaker states the noun followed by the pronoun: “The traffic, it is light from …”)
When I was in first or second grade, that used to be fairly common among the kids. E.g., “My mother, she told me…” The teachers would explicitly tell us not to do that.
I haven’t heard that construction in a long time, but I admit that I don’t listen to traffic reports on the radio that much. Nor do I hang around young kids enough to know if they still do that.
“Affectation” . Though even that isn’t quite right. It’s more of a mannerism or quirk of dialect. Although devoted ddscriptivists will no doubt justify it as a functional element of language, the equivalent of preceding a sentence with “Hey!” .
FWIW (which is not much) my mistake was a typo and was caused by pecking out my response on my tablet’s virtual keyboard. Yours was a malapropism. No big deal, but not the same.
More accurately, that is what language becomes. And if the particular quirk is illogical and the result of mishearing or misunderstanding or some other mistake, then the language becomes needlessly convoluted and confusing. About which I might well opine that “I literally could care less”, an expression with so many different interpretations that it now means nothing at all. That’s why those who try to stop such abuses are destined for heaven.
Actually mine was an autocorrectism but the point has unsurprisingly been completely missed: your compulsion to constantly and consistently “correct” is mockable, comedic, needless, and simply annoying.
I have no personal belief in any afterlife but those “who try to stop such abuses” are damned to Hell while living!
It would be in real life. But as I said earlier, I never correct anyone IRL. Here on the Dope, however, the word you’re looking for is “tradition”. And in a Pit thread about pedantry, it’s basically mandatory!
Ah, but for (you don’t need to be told what’s a “butt for”, I hope, if so, well, have a seat) the impetus for your honorable Pit mention was your not having … shrunk … from your self appointed role as marshal of our lawless lexicography in a Cafe Society thread.
And while I of course am mostly having fun here, Cafe Society on a message board is a context in which “proper” usage need not be policed.
Your comment of course also raises the reason why the increased share of social interactions being not in person, not IRL, is a detriment to discourse. We allow ourselves behaviors that we would not allow ourselves face to face. Seriously, consider why you would not allow yourself to correct people “IRL” but feel it is your obligation to do such on line? What are you thinking that makes it not okay to do in the real world but fine in a discussion about a comic strip on line?
No news flash here: it is just as mockable and annoying on line. Maybe more? In the real world friends know me and know I love discussing words and am happy to go off on digressions about how words are misused as well as used. They can know and play the specific room, fine with me, not with our mutual friend Eddie, whatever. Here, correcting people you don’t know? I think not.
As I implied earlier, affected pedantry as a form of humour is practically a tradition on the Dope, but I don’t recall this specific instance and I’m genuinely curious. Can you point me to the thread you’re talking about?
Um, scroll to the top of this thread and click the link? That CS pedantic correction is what birthed your berth in The Pit. (I’d have thought the “shrunk” would’ve jogged recollection?)
You thunks that people should hear the error of shrunks. But shranks you said and got no thanks.
What the ever-loving fuck are you talking about? The “pedantic correction” in CS was by kaylasdad99, not me. My comments which eventually spawned a wider discussion about pedantry were entirely confined to the Pit and didn’t even have anything to do with the original remark. Maybe next time check your facts more carefully before making unfounded asinine accusations.
