What’s the proper use of the phrase: “which begs the
question?”
Clearly, many folks who use the phrase have been using it incorrectly,
according to a word smith friend. But heck if I can find a CLEAR and
definitive definition of what it DOES mean and how to use it! 
Cue the arrival of the descriptivists who will insist that the new usage is just as proper as the correct one, in 5…
4…
3…
2…
I would argue there is difference between “Begging the Question” and “begs the question”. One is an informal logical fallacy, and one is a useful phrase. I don’t understand why the failure to distinguish one from the other causes so much consternation.
Just because you preemptively disparage a point of view does not make it incorrect.
New OP: Why do black people stupid.
Jerk: Cue the people who will insist that black people don’t stupid more than normals in 5… 4… 3…2 … 1…
1…
0
How else can you possibly define meaning and usage except as what good writers currently do?
Good writers - writers in newspapers, magazines, books, etc. - have long ago discarded the older meaning of begging the question. Ignoring that contributes to confusion rather than avoids it.
“The most common use” - again, by good writers - is by definition the proper usage of a term.
If you are in a situation in which you will be judged by pedants unacquainted with the way the English language actually works (by my definition, prescriptivists) use the older meaning. For all other purposes, use the meaning that suits you.
Professional writer for 30 years speaking,
Not to hijack, but descriptivists don’t use terms like ‘proper’ and ‘correct,’ except in that some things are ‘correct’ because they are used in a language. For instance, “the fluffy bunny” is correct but “the bunny fluffy” is not.
So, yeah, if you’re going to disparage a point of view, at least understand that point of view.
Be that as it may, other professional writers disagree with you.
Also, the vast, VAST majority of newspaper writers whose work I’ve read aren’t what I’d term “good.” Merely proficient, at best.
You’re kidding. Or am I being whooshed? You’re citing William Safire? In a 10-year-old column that reports that The New York Times was already using the phrase frequently and that dictionaries have long allowed it? But William Safire says “hold the fort for Aristotle, the English language and St. George!” and we’re supposed to take that as a serious comment?
And obviously I am using “good” to distinguish between professional writers and, say, the creatures that inhabit the internet. They are easily distinguishable. Mediocre is a shining exemplar of clarity and discernment compared to what crawls the web.
Your whole post was a whoosh, wasn’t it?
Cue the arrival of the prescriptionists who will explain, without being descriptivist in relation to an earlier time, why the old usage is the “correct” usage , in 5…
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Oh wait, no, that’s never going to happen.
I was going to make some joke about you saying “prescriptionists” instead of “prescriptivists”, but then I ended up liking your post too much to even lightheartedly mock it.
OK, so where are the people rushing in to correct the OP about his misuse of the term “grammar”? A language’s grammar are the rules needed to form basically cogent sentences in that language. It’s what is used to explain why “Cat fat is very so so.” just doesn’t work in English. A language’s grammar is the bedrock and it changes very slowly indeed. (Note that colorless green ideas sleep furiously, which means that a grammatical sentence might yet be a meaningless sentence. Now productize the objective goals while maximizing the harmony of the synergy paradigm without regressing to homo-phallic post-pre-post-pre-structuralist Marxist-Derrida rhetoric.)
Grammar has nothing to do with spelling, which was regularized only recently in this language, and it has nothing to do with usage, which are a much vaguer, more fashion-driven, and more changeable set of rules than both grammar and the basic rules of spelling. For example, the prohibition against splitting infinitives is purely a matter of usage: It was part of the ‘Latinization’ fad perpetrated by the more illiterate among the prescriptivists. Its only effective use was as a shibboleth to mark those who did not follow it as being of a lower social class than those who did. Now that nobody follows it, it is a dead issue. The definition of words falls under usage, which is where this OP lies.
Note that prescriptivists insist they are defending grammar when grammar is the part of language that least needs defending: Someone whose grammar is far afoul of the mass standard will have a very difficult time communicating at all, whereas someone whose usage falls afoul of the prescriptivists’ arbitrary shibboleths opens themself up to tirades about how atrocious their grammar is.
This thread is filling up with posts I like. It brings a tear to my eye.
[Moderating]
Implying that another poster is a jerk is not appropriate for GQ. Don’t do this again.
On the other hand, commasense and others, your posts are not really helpful. Let’s knock off the prescriptivist/descriptivist sniping. You can argue for a point of view, but lets not be disparaging towards those who might take an opposing view.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
[On preview: Colibri: I was only attempting a humorous comment about the way these discussions often go. I may have provoked others to snipe at me (although I’m not complaining about it), but clearly I was not sniping at anyone in particular. I hope that the remainder of this post, which was written before your post appeared, meets with your approval.]
The thing that bugs me about this particular case is that it simply makes no sense: why would something that “raises” or “suggests” a question (my preferred constructions) be considered as “begging” the question? What has begging got to do with it? So regardless of whether you think it’s okay or not, its meaning is not as clear as the alternatives. One good reason not to use it.
But, you may counter, what has the so-called “correct” construction got to do with begging? As the Wikipedia entry explains, it’s translated from the Latin Petitio Principii, meaning assuming (or begging) the principles. It’s an ancient translation of a relatively obscure term from formal logic. As a term of art, its meaning is far from clear to the layperson.
So sometime in the last 20 or 30 years, someone heard it, didn’t understand what it meant, but felt like using it anyway, and dropped it into a conversation or piece of writing where he should have used “raises the question.” Because so few people are taught formal logic these days, this incorrect usage spread like a weed, and now you hear it a lot. And, sadly, sometimes see it in the work of professional writers.
The question is, has it been used in the new sense long enough and by “good” enough writers, to be acceptable? Exapno and someone in Wikipedia say yes. As a writer and editor (professionally for 11 years) I say no. That’s horse racing.
I’m gratified that at least I have Q.E.D. on my side (I think). Oh yeah, and Safire, too. (A mixed blessing.)
The thing about all these pedantic “errors,” including “begs the question,” split infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions, etc., is that there are almost always perfectly acceptable alternatives. So I rarely, if ever, use any of them in my own writing, or let them stand in things I edit, because even if I consider them okay, I’m sure to get a complaint from some *other *pedant. And there’s nothing more annoying than a pedant who doesn’t agree with your pedantry. Am I right, people?
BTW, Exapno, I don’t think you read Safire’s column closely enough: the dictionaries he refers to do not support the “incorrect” usage of “begs the question,” (although they may today). Also, the fact that Safire’s readers found examples of that usage in the NYT doesn’t necessarily mean that the *Times *permits it as a matter of style. Papers may quote a speaker using phrases or constructions that their editors wouldn’t otherwise pass. And they may give non-staff writers more leeway. I’m not asserting that Times writers and editors never use “begs the question,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if they also follow the practice I mentioned above.
What bothers me is that we already had a phrase meaning exactly the same thing, “raises the question.” We didn’t need to steal a phrase from the discipline of Philosophy for no purpose whatsoever. Usurping that phrase accomplishes nothing in terms of adding some concept to the language that didn’t already exist.
So … let’s take the word “pigeon” and use it to mean “house.” So every time you refer to the little building you live in, just call it your pigeon. The result of course is that you’ve just added pointless confusion to the language, plus we need to hunt around for a new term to describe those damn birds, for no reason whatsoever.
Of course it makes sense. If I’m begging for something I’m pleading for it. If you anthropomorphise the “something” that “raises” or “suggests” the question, it is entirely obvious how that “something” could be viewed as begging for the obvious question to be asked. It’s a very short leap from that to “begging the question”. Indeed I would suggest that it is precisely because the expression makes so much sense in this way that it has come to be used this way.
I like the “old” way of using the phrase, but I confess it seems clear to me how it came to have its new meaning. “Begs the question” can easily be understood to mean “just begs for us to ask the question.”
-FrL-
**Frylock ** has put what I just said much more succinctly.
So we already had “raises the question”; heaven forfend the existence of synonyms! So “begs the question” already had a certain very niche use; well, I doubt one case in a hundred of its use in the new form causes any actual confusion.
The word “panache” originally (in the 1500s) meant a plume of feathers; it only later (circa 1900) began to be used with the meaning of “flashy, elegant manner”, one for which we already had such perfectly acceptable words as “style”, “flair”, and “verve”. It’d be frightfully silly to complain about this new use of “panache”, and yet, it is precisely analogous to the situation with “begs the question” (if you feel that there are connotational differences between “panache” and “style”, “flair”, “verve”, etc., well, that’s not a mark against the analogy; there are definitely connotational differences between “raises the question” and “begs the question”, as well). And, of course, “style”, “flair”, “verve”, etc., all had earlier (and continuing) meanings beyond those synonymous with “panache”, as well.
Complaining about the myriad ways in which language inevitably changes over time is like complaining about the inverse squared law of gravitational attraction; you can rant at the universe all you like about the way it works, but you’re not going to get it to bend to your will.