Hmm…
Nah, I don’t have any pups in this particular fight. 
Except to note that Muhammad Ali’s daughter, Hana, said “Our hearts are literally hurting” in response to his death.
You have not understood Pullum’s article. It is your limitation that you cannot grasp the difference between empirical rules based on data, made-up prescriptivist rules that claim authority but are unsupported by evidence, and the subjective stylistic opinions expressed by Pinker in his Style book. I have tried to explain it to you several times in different ways; Pullum has explained it with admirable clarity; Pinker explains it more extensively if you read The Language Instinct. But at this point I’m done. We can explain it to you, but we cannot understand it for you.
Just in case anyone takes that article too seriously,
Many people who actually understand language took issue with Heller’s ignorance.
Thanks for those links. I knew that The New Yorker was a renowned hotbed of prescriptivist nincompoopery, but I didn’t realize that there was such apposite history on the very issues that we’re discussing.
The Atlantic interview where Pinker mentioned his resemblance to conductor Simon Rattle was interesting for me. Pinker is of course an intellectual hero of mine; and as a schoolboy I met Simon Rattle before he was remotely famous - he was in his early 20’s, conducting a local amateur orchestra in London. So I’ve followed Rattle’s career ever since with astonishment - I certainly did not have the musical sophistication to realize that I was in the presence of such genius.
Right. :rolleyes:
This thread has long ceased to have any relevance to the OP and I was content to let this train wreck die, but a couple of things have prompted me to revive it. One is the discovery of an interesting and pertinent paper on this very subject. It happens that it opposes my view on the usage of “literally”, but more importantly, it helps us understand how its usage may have evolved, which I think adds impartially to what this extended discussion had become. I’m not sure if I find it entirely persuasive but I present it for what it’s worth because I think it’s interesting, even if it sends the language libertarians into fits of victorious hallelujahs.
But the other thing that has literally been stewing me (even though it’s not likely to result in a tender meal) is that smug comment about the New Yorker quoted above. Let’s start with that one.
The New Yorker is arguably one of the preeminent magazines of news, literature, art, and culture in the world, and its pages have been graced by some of the most renowned writers in the world. Their style guide, which is famously rigorous on some trivial matters, offers tremendous scope for creating writing, and reflects a long and storied editorial tradition that is nothing less than an enduring subculture built around the love of language. It deserves better than to be dismissed with sneering disdain by self-proclaimed linguistic literati. Whatever happened to humility and objectivity? Wait, I think I found an example that illustrates a simple sequence from prescription to execution:
[ul]
[li]I’d like to illustrate why I feel we must be so careful about use of the words “correct” and “incorrect” in language (let alone “stupid” and “ignorant”), and most especially to maintain humility … – Riemann[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Many people who actually understand language took issue with Heller’s ignorance. – Left Hand of Dorkness[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Nathan Heller’s an ignoramus. – Steven Pinker[/li][/ul]
Now that we understand what humility is all about, there’s one other thing:
If you browse Pullum’s blogs, he infers correctness from various combinations of actual usage, the rules of grammar (sometimes painstakingly analyzed), and personal stylistic preferences. Pinker has done the same. There’s nothing “made-up” about prescriptivist rules even if some are now regarded as pedantic and silly – they were all thought to have some logical basis at some point in time. Fowler’s usage guide, Strunk & White, and the various books and pamphlets that have been trying to guide our language for some 500 years all follow in the same tradition, even if methods have shifted away from authoritarian dictates. Pinker’s style book (which as the NYT points out is substantially about grammar) may be the most scientifically based such effort to date, but it’s fundamentally another step in the same process.
That said, here’s the paper [PDF]. The part I found most interesting was where the meaning first begins to transcend the strictly literal, where it enhances a choice of words that is particularly apt and whose idiomatic meaning is peculiarly suitable though not exactly literal. One example: “In his music videos he literally brings words to life: one of his favorite techniques is to superimpose song lyrics on a background image.” The Fitzgerald quote “he literally glowed …” that we’ve been discussing here seems to be in this category of usage – it’s what I was trying to get at with “not literal, but close”.
So you don’t like it when respected writers about language are treated with sneering disdain–and you linked to Heller’s review of Pinker? That undercuts your sadness a bit, you know.
Have you read it? The bulk of it is devoted to a philosophical approach to writing. He’s fairly careful not to call any particular usage “correct” or “incorrect,” IIRC, but he does suggest that certain kinds of writing tend to promote or obstruct clarity.
wofpup, you quote me saying:
And then in the immediately following paragraph you prove that you don’t understand by conflating these three things, claiming that they are part of the “same process”.
I’'ll provide one more hint that may be blocking your understanding here. There are two quite distinct meanings of the word rule:
(1) Empirical rule = an observed consistent pattern of behavior found in nature. The primary purpose of such a rule is to describe nature. Gravitation in physics would be such a rule. Linguists seek to understand and describe language by figuring out what these rules are from the way people actually speak. And, crucially - so do young children when they acquire oral language (see more below).
(2) Prescriptive rule = a principle, however derived, the purpose of which is to instruct people how to behave. Rules of this type are usually based on ideology or subjective opinion. Don’t park in front of fire hydrants would be such a rule. (Although as Alan Smithee has pointed out, one could certainly in principle derive such rules in a manner that can be defended based on evidence or superior logical argument that they promote some desirable quality such as clarity.)
The world (including you) might be less confused about language if we used different words for these two qualitatively distinct kinds of “rule”.
The confusion is exacerbated by this: children learn to speak primarily by unconsciously inferring the empirical rules of language of type (1) by listening to those around them, and then following those rules. Children cannot articulate these rules, but they instinctively follow them when they construct a sentence. However, most of the population - including some less thoughtful parents & schoolteachers, and you - don’t grasp this. People think that kids learn to talk by adults working out rules of type (2), and they telling kids that they should follow those rules. Now in principle it might have been that children could learn oral language prescriptively - for this is precisely the way they learn to read and write, and learning a second language often proceeds this way. But it’s a fact of nature that children do not learn their primary oral language skills prescriptively, they learn them unconsciously and implicitly. Thus, prescriptivism plays no important part in language.
Now Steven Pinker is a linguist who thinks about the way language actually works, i.e. in his day job he tries to observe, understand and describe the unconscious empirical type(1) rules that are “seen in nature”. However, on occasion, as in his Style book, he branches out to give his personal opinions on some rules of type (2). He knows the difference, as do all linguists - and as LHoD has said, it’s noticeable that Pinker is rarely judgemental when he’s giving style opinions, he rarely if ever say correct" and “incorrect”. He reserves the word ignoramus for where it’s deserved, for the purported langauge experts at the New Yorker. He’s not castigating their opinions. He’s decrying the fact that (like you) they can’t tell the difference between empirical and prescriptive rules.
Again, all linguists, indeed all scientists understand this qualitative disctinction quite clearly. Yet prescriptivists generally don’t, leading to accusations that linguists are hypocrites, linguists are just doing the same thing as prescriptivists but with different opinions, etc. I don’t want to insult you or patronize you, but it’s a simple fact that so long as you continue to remain ignorant of this clear qualitative distinction, you will not be able to understand how language works.
I take that back. Sometimes the New Yorker journalists and other rigid prescriptivists have opinions that are just so incredibly stupid that it is important to point out how stupid their opnions are, as Pinker and other linguists do on occasion (always explaining why). But at heart, it’s not just a question of one opinion vs another opinion. These prescriptivists are ignorant because they don’t understand the principles at work in language.
Here’s Steven Pinker in a Slate article saying what I tried to explain above much more eloquently.
I would not contest this. But they have no insight into the nature of language.
In fact, history is littered with examples of superb writers who were also prescriptivists (though rarely so utterly clueless as New Yorker journalists) who did not understand the fundamental nature of language.
Jonathan Swift
https://amolingua.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/descriptivism-vs-prescriptivism-in-a-nutshell
George Orwell
http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/04/04/elimination-of-the-fittest
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992
Strunk & White - E.B White in particular was an eloquent writer
http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497
No, you have simply misunderstood me – or, to put it in more neutral terms, somewhere between my late-night efforts to express an idea and your reading of it, the idea was not communicated. The relevant point is in the first sentence (with bolding added):
If you browse Pullum’s blogs, he infers correctness from various combinations of actual usage, the rules of grammar (sometimes painstakingly analyzed), and personal stylistic preferences.
There is no implication that these three determinants of correctness are “the same” or have equal validity or anything else. You have acquired this fixation that I don’t know what an empirical rule is and it seems that nothing I can say will shake you out of it. What I’m describing here is that I’ve observed Pullum infer correctness from various weightings of these determinants, ranging from zero to perhaps one of them being his entire argument. For instance in one blog article he uses Google search results to justify a particular usage (can’t remember the specifics now) on the basis that this is overwhelmingly how people actually use a particular phrase. Here he is applying the empirical rule. In others, however, he derives his opinion from a systematic analysis of existing rules of grammar, or simply advances an opinion on the basis of a stylistic preference because he thinks it’s clearer. These are in no way “the same” as the former and I never tried to make that claim.
When I then said “Pinker does the same” I meant that I’ve observed him doing all three as well, in various venues (I wasn’t referring to the Style book which I haven’t read).
Finally, you read my concluding statement “…fundamentally another step in the same process” with those remarkable blinders on and interpreted it accordingly. In fact it was a continuation of the previous thought “…the various books and pamphlets that have been trying to guide our language for some 500 years all follow in the same tradition”, that being the noble tradition of trying to advance the language.
I might note that my rapidly typed late-night ruminations contained a couple of unfortunate typos, too. “… which I think adds impartially to what this extended discussion had become” should be “has become”, and my praise of the New Yorker (honestly my favorite magazine) was somewhat obfuscated by referring to it as offering “tremendous scope for creating writing”, where clearly what was meant was “creative writing”.
Your acknowledgement that the New Yorker is arguably one of the preeminent magazines of news, literature, art, and culture in the world seems strangely at odds with the declaration that it is inhabited by “rigid prescriptivists [who] have opinions that are just so incredibly stupid that it is important to point out how stupid their opnions are” and are “utterly clueless”. Many of the “prescriptivist” policies are nothing more than attempts to achieve uniformity in the editorial columns, and some, like the famously idiosyncratic insistence on the use of the diaeresis, are merely typographical in nature and sometimes the subject of good-natured banter within the magazine itself.
You mention E.B. White as an eloquent writer. Indeed he was, though you might not be aware that much of the writing he did was for the New Yorker, first as a contributor and later as an iconic staff writer. Which didn’t stop him from engaging in the same banter; forced by the magazine’s style guide to use “we” instead of his preferred “I” when writing in the “Notes and Comment” section (because it was considered editorial content), White wrote that “[it gave] the impression that the stuff was written by a set of identical twins or the members of a tumbling act”. It was all good-natured fun over trivia among top writers and editors who were at the top of their game and knew it. To grimly denounce these people as “clueless” about language is a pretty sad misreading of the reality, even if Pullum scores the occasional technical hit in his mean-spirited attack on E.B. White. The New Yorker is an iconic institution in the domain of language as art, and when pontificating linguists wander into their fold, they rightly wonder whether anything beneficial will ensue.
Ok, I think I understand you now, and I think I understand more about what can be very confusing here.
The thing is, whenever you generally read Pullum or Pinker in popular writing talking about why prescriptivists are misguided, all that you generally ever see them discussing are the often trivial bits and pieces that the prescriptivists tend to fuss over – i.e. the things where there really are no consistent empirical rules, or where empirical usage is clearly drifting into variants with varying degrees of empirical support (e.g. figurative use of literally, “could of” as a variant of “could’ve”) where the prescriptivists don’t like the drift. Although Pullum & Pinker may be trying to bring some modicum of evidence and common sense to these things, in general such matters really do not have any definitive empirical answer. With regard to such matters, the way any one individual writes is ultimately a subjective choice and a matter of style and appropriateness given social perceptions, but there is no correct or incorrect in the empirical sense (not even to “could of”, although I know this will upset you!).
Unless you read technical papers (or something like Language Log or one of Pinker’s books), you’re unlikely to see Pullum or Pinker actually discussing the fundamental empirical rules. And language pundits never do either, because there is simply no disagreement about them, they are taken for granted - nothing to talk about. A simple example of a fundamental empirical rule would be word order, English we would say “eat rice”, whereas in Japanese it’s “rice eat”. If you say “rice eat” in English, that’s simply wrong grammar - it’s empirically not a valid word order in any English dialect.
So, since you’re generally only seeing Pullum & Pinker talking about non-empirical rules, I can see where the misperception comes from that they are just like prescriptivists really, just with different opinions.
There’s no problem with editorial style guides, none whatsoever (unless someone objects to a specific style guide, e.g., the use of “he” as a non-gendered pronoun). That’s not what this is about: this is about their editorial habit of hiring non-linguists to fuliminate on linguistic matters.
Just because someone’s an amazing gymnast doesn’t mean he’s qualified to review findings from the world of physics. Just because someone’s a good writer doesn’t mean she’s qualified to review findings from the world of linguistics.
You’re trying to set up some sort of discrepancy here–“How can you criticize the New Yorker’s review of Pinker, when they’re all such good writers?”–but it’s a nonsensical discrepancy.
My favourite -
Driving in the car, listening to the radio, host and guest talking about the latest research on arthritis:
‘Your knee-joints literally become rusty’.
You know those times when you scream at the car radio because of something really, really dumb someone just said, and the person in the lane next to you thinks you’re having a road-rage attack?