So then- “everyone who can publish a dictionary gets a vote”. :rolleyes:
I don’t know, perhaps it is the severe lack of tools I have to work with, you know the whole whopping 15 smilies… Sorry if my lack of “originality” bothers you. :wally:
Roland, what made you think I was refering to you? You aren’t the only one in this thread.
Well, no, but since LHoD and I are basically espousing different aspects of the same point, it would seem pretty silly to say you disagree with him, but agree with me. If you think our points are dissimilar enough to merit that, please do explain; I’d be genuinely interested to hear why that is so. Certainly, though, it isn’t because of that one paragraph I quoted above, which does nothing more than rehash a point that Daniel made in two of his former posts?
Roland and Lefty,
I am going to slip out of argumentative mode here and use a couple of analogies that I hope will illustrate how I feel about this subject. I understand that analogies have limitations and am not offering them as proof of anything.
An art student might take a class in figure drawing as part his education. It may be that further down the line he intends to pursue non-representational art, but figure drawung is required at his school. Now he could complain that this class is meaningless to him, and that art is free expression, and that nobody can say what is right and what is wrong. But his instructor would say to him "Show me you have mastered the fundamentals. Show me you understand the precepts of perspective, and proportion, and composition befrore you go out there and start breaking the rules. A saxophone player might well say the same thing to his teacher, and receive a similar response. Before he can start improvising he must learn the notes and scales and underlying theories.
Now my taste in art and music tends toward outer fringes of regular. I prefer Ornette Coleman over Kenny G; Captain Beefheart over the Captain and Tennile. I appreciate improvisation and new ways of expression. I am delighted when someone coins a phrase and I get that “aha” moment.
If someome says grapefruit instead of apple then they have simply used the wrong word. I am perfectly content to say to that person “That was an inefficient use of language.” It does not have to be about correcting anything at all. I agree that efficency should be the engine that drives language. What concerns me is that the idea that validity is not a concept that we can associate with language will breed a generation of lazy, inefficient speakers; people who attempt to improvise before they have have learned how to blow the changes.
Anyway, thanks for the debate guys. You have made me rethink my position on several points. I think I am not as prescriptive as when I started, if that means anything. I certainly understand that enforcement is impossible, at any rate.
Lefty-Did you ever figure out that puzzle I gave you?
Your perspective is certainly valid, trandallt. I never thought otherwise. Actually, if you can believe it, I was a prescriptivist of sorts before I started reading this thread. Because I hadn’t thought about the issue too much, I went with my gut feeling of “right” versus “wrong” language use, and I came into this thread fully prepared to defend the OP’s point (while also remarking that he’s being a bit uptight). But reading through others’ arguments, particularly LHoD’s, led me to see the logic of the point. I identified what I believed to be the true point of contention, began extrapolating from there, and decided that given what I believed to be true regarding the purpose of language, the descriptivist side held more merit. That was when I began taking up the arguments of those before me, and adding a couple of off-the-cuff realizations of my own. Weird debating style, sure, but hey, it’s what I do. Anyhow, not to get too far off topic, your point and mine are about this close: || to seeing eye to eye. I respect your viewpoint, and I respect you for listening to the opposite side’s arguments.
Thanks to you, too, for what has indeed been an enlightening debate. I’ve said it before, but threads like these (hijacked though they generally are) are why I love the SDMB. Being a 20-year-old waiter, I rarely get the opportunity to discuss stuff like this IRL. Long live The Pit.
yes! Yes, curse you, I did! After being driven to distraction by it, slipping out of conversations I should’ve been paying attention to, I did! Raise and raze, right? That damn well better be right!
I also came up with a few alternatives that weren’t quite as good, as did my brother-in-law. The only one I remember offhand was his: Seed (to invest in something) and cede (to give something up). I’ll try to think of the other ones.
As for the analogy, believe me that I have no problem at all teaching folks to use academic English. I absolutely loved doing that for teh brief time in college I got to do it, and I like to think I was pretty good at it. Even when I got students who’d read too much Jack Kerouac and thought that disciplined writing was for chumps, I could usually work with them a bit to get them to understand the virtues of clear, organized writing that played by the rules of academia.
To continue your analogy, though, all too often I see people who’ve learned a few tricks of perspective in their art classes and then go out in the world, look at artwork that doesn’t use perspective, and throw a metaphorical hissy fit about it. There are definite advantages to having that formal art training, but some folks create great art without benefit of the training. And other folks with no training still manage to accomplish what they want through their art.
I suspect that, as usual, we agree on the important stuff and are arguing mostly over the emphasis.
Daniel
Raise and raze it is. Yer good.
Yes, but even two allies may not have complete agreement.
I have in the past been a literalist when it comes to langauge. Not to say that my grammar or word usage is up to par, but I can admit when I am wrong and learn from it. My experience with people in the past that subscribe to what I see as postmodernistic view of, to use your ideas “everybody gets a vote,” tend to be those that cannot admit they are occasionally wrong. Not to say that I think that is the case here- as both your credentials would say otherwise. Just a trend I notice.
After reading a couple similar threads on this topic, I have come to the conclusion that some word usage changes. Like with the OP. Your side likes to go to extremes though, and challenge any verbage that doesn’t sit well with em. For example, referring to science. Do you feel scientific terms should be mandated to the whim of the masses? Should things like Evolution be able to be mangled as seen fit? How about those that scream that schizophrenia should be considered multiple personality because of “common usage?”
There is a point your “postmodernism” of language reaches an absurd point. It generally does rather quickly- which is why I commented in this thread, it was reaching that point.
I agree that the OP is off base, but there are many instances where common usage shouldn’t change words at all, such as science or math. Do you disagree with that?
Consider my basic principle, that language use is effective inasmuch as the audience understands the speaker’s ideas efficiently and (possibly) finds beauty in them. Let me turn this back around on you, then: how do you think, given this principle, I would respond to your questions? Please explain, because you seem to be suggesting that I would abandon this basic principle.
Daniel
No, I don’t think you would abandon your principle, and thus I can only conclude that you could be a loon.
Wow. What a dumbass thing to say.
Care to try again and answer the question? How do you think this principle applies in this circumstance?
I suspect you haven’t thought this through. Granted, you may just be playing a part, the part of your namesake; nonetheless, give it a shot. Is effective communication among scientists enhanced or hindered by having specific, mutually-agreed-upon definitions for words amongst these scientists?
Do try not to be an ass when you answer it this time.
Daniel
But that isn’t what you are saying. Scientists agreeing on changing the name for sake of communicating among OTHER scientists is one thing. Forcing science to change defintions merely become Joe Bob the hillbilly doesn’t understand science and uses it improperly is another. My take on your position (and you seem to be agreeing with it), is that Joe Bob should have equal weight in this decision as the scientists.
Science changes all the time, defintions change, but there is no “equal voting.”
If you seem to think that mathmatics and the sciences should be forced to alter defintions because the ignorant masses are ignorant, then the only thing I can conclude is that you are deluded or just so far into your argument you don’t want to back out even the slightest.
If that makes me an ass, well I guess I am. Because while I agree with the rest of your points, you have gone too far if you claim this.
Now, explain to me why I have to address your questions, when you merely address my initial point with posturing and endless questions?
You’re missing the point entirely. Nobody is voting on anything. There is no decision to be made on this issue. If Joe Bob wishes to speak to scientists, he should learn the terminology they use, and what they recognize each word to mean. Similarly, if the scientist wants to hang out with Joe Bob n’ the good ol’ boys down at the bar, he’d best be fairly well-versed in the dialect they banter about, else’n he’s gon’ be gett’n lookt at right funny.
To say that descriptivists are attempting to “force change upon definitions” is to ignore the driving point that words do not have uniquely correct definitions in the first place. If you know what your audience understands words to mean, you use those words in that manner. If you don’t, you’re being an idiot. Conversely, if you are the audience of a given speaker, and you understand that speaker’s meaning when he uses a word unfamiliar to you (or perhaps “misuses” a word you’ve encountered before), then the speaker is still engaging in effective communication. To interrupt the speaker and “correct” him would be a waste of your time, unless the strange usage causes a significant lapse in your comprehension, at which point you should politely request that he use a different term more easily understandable to you. That could include the “correct” term as you understand it.
Remember, I’m not talking about changing the absolute definition of a word based on common usage. That’s just an oddball form of prescriptivism. Instead, I’m arguing that the absolute definition of a word is an invalid concept entirely. Under that principle, your argument becomes irrelevant.
I missed this sentence before, but just wanted to make a comment on it now.
I’m curious as to why a committed descriptivist like you would be at all worried about the decline of the subjunctive mood in the English language. After all, you say you are concerned with communication and with aesthetics in language, and i can’t think of a single aspect of the English language that we could lose with less impact on our ability to communicate effectively and attractively than the subjunctive. What is it about the subjunctive, for you, that makes it worth saving?
After all, if we take just a couple of examples of the subjunctive mood, it becomes quite clear that we can substitute the indicative, or rearrange the sentence, with no loss of clarity whatsoever.
For example,
“If i were a rich man”
“If i was a rich man”
Surely anyone reading the second sentence would be in no doubt as to the intended meaning, and would realize that (despite the use of the indicative) i am not actually a rich man right now.
Or:
“I would prefer that he remove his shoes before entering my house”
“I would prefer that he removes his shoes before entering my house”
“I would prefer him to remove his shoes before entering my house”
Now, in both these cases, i prefer the first example, and i’m a big fan of the subjunctive, but i’m not the one making the radical descriptivist case in this thread. I’m curious as to how you decide what is and is not worth worrying about in the fight for better English and/or clearer communication.
I wnat to state, just for the record, that I never, ever misuse words. If you see me use a word in a setence that seems to be incorrect, I am merely actively campaigning to change the language.
I hope this makes my position perfectly opaque.
First, Epimetheus, you have to address my question because if you’d read my previous posts carefully, you’d find the answers to your questions therein. I didn’t want to be repeating my previous answers, so I was trying to figure out if you could find those answers.
Apparently not.
What is this “forcing science to change definitions” you speak of? How on earth would that work?
Joe Bob doesn’t have equal weight in this decision as the scientists, inasmuch as there IS no “this decision.” Joe Bob gets an autocratic absolute say in what he means when he says “evolution,” and he gets an autocratic absolute say in how he interprets the word when someone else says it.
If he’s speaking with a scientist and he uses the word in a method different from the scientist’s method, then he won’t be communicating effectively with the scientist. That’s not a statement of values: that’s simply the way the language works.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Maybe you’ve invented some sort of mind-control ray that lets you change the meanings that people assign to words. If so, then we should be talking about what the definition should mean. But absent such a technology, it’s an incoherent concept.
Fortunately, that’s not what I’m saying. Mathematics and the sciences don’t have definitions, strictly speaking; the individuals who participate in these pursuits do. As for forcing those individuals to alter their definitions, that would run absolutely counter to the point I’ve been making in this thread, that everybody chooses how they use the language, and the only proper yardsticks by which to measure their language use are its efficacy and beauty.
Do I need to explain why I think it’s to Joe Bob’s disadvantage to use evolution in a sense different from the scientific stance when discussing the scientific issue?
Daniel
Umm…
cuz I think it’s purty?
Really, it’s not much more than that: I like the subjunctive on aesthetic grounds, and if it disappears, I’ll be sad.
My favorite explanation of the need for the subjunctive comes from the diaries of two political figures.
“Why, if I was president,” wrote Bill Clinton, “was I subjected to such indignities?”
“Why, if I were president,” wrote Al Gore, “I would’ve MADE her was that dress!”
Daniel