:smack:
If I were disingenuous I would claim a simple finger-slip typo. But alas, I heard it in my head with the “n”. Damn aliens. I need a thicker tinfoil hat.
That’s really nice and I’m really happy for you, but I think we’ve strayed a little - the change of accepted meaning of the term ‘begs the question’ is underway - at some point in the not-too-distant future, it will be the case that academics merely point out ‘do you know this phrase used to mean something quite different?’ (as opposed to currently saying ‘it doesn’t mean what you think it means’).
It may be that in academic circles, that change takes a long time to be accepted, or that it is resisted indefinitely, but for everyone else I’d say it is inevitable or perhaps that it has already happened.
But Wait! Stop the presses!
This Just in
Now, did the Cambridge University Press control that usage, or merely describe it?
Perhaps it would have been simpler just to say:
Formally: No
Infomally: Probably
“Decimate” is an Aussie’s reply to the question, “Who was Lucille Ball married to?” 
The question at hand is whether it’s correct usage. As I said in my original post it’s not correct usage for formal discourse. Your link is to a dictionary of -idiom-, and idiomatic use is -not- formal use. That’s exactly what I meant when I wrote “slang phrase”, and I appreciate your helping me clarify that.
I don’t think anyone’s claiming that it is not used and understood in the idiomatic sense. I’m certainly not - if you’ll see my first post again, you’ll see that I said it’s okay for informal use, although I admit to sneering a bit at that.
I’ve no objection to informal styles of writing or speaking, I just believe that using this phrase in its idiomatic sense sounds pretentious. Furthur, if you’re addressing an audience more familiar with its formal usage, it sounds stupid.
I believe that correct usage is defined by formal rules of the language. You seem to believe that correct usage is defined by the unwashed masses. I think we both agree that it has different usage in formal or idiomatic context. Our disagreement is over what comprises correct usage.
That said, if you want to go toe-to-toe over that, fire up a GD thread and we can go at it. For the purposes of this question, I think I’ve defined my position clearly.
Yes, I did. Thank you.
Just to clarify for the record, all circular arguments are logically valid since obviously, the conclusion follows from the premise. (Cite). Whether people will accept them as informally valid in a debate is another matter. Petitio principii is the formal term.
As he points out, the ‘question’ may still be true, but the argument is no proof of that.
On the other hand, assuming the desired conclusion to be true and showing that it works logically is half of a common logical technique. The other half is to assume the conclusion is false and show that that assumption leads to some inconsistency or contradiction.
I don’t see how you come up with “avoids the question” as a popular definition. The popular definition would be considered by most to be “raises the question,” but the best combination of actual definition and popular would be “raises a premise that actually requires initial proof.”
On second thought, I see why you might think it’s “avoid the question,” but I think that’s the reverse of how most people see it.
Not at all; as I pointed out in my first post to this thread, the correct formal usage is in reference to the petitio principii logical fallacy. I then provided what I feel to be additional infomation about how usage generally works in an informal context (where the term ‘correct’ isn’t terribly appropriate anyway). Whether or not you like it, we aren’t just discussing the correct formal usage here. Sorry.
How exactly do we determine when something had entered the formal usage? This is a pretty vague criterion and it’s pretty difficult to test. Does only 1 academic have to use a word or phrase in a paper? 2? What if the “academic” only has a master’s rather than a PhD?
Does it have to be printed and published? In what? Newspaper, Academic Journal?
Is the acid test really
It seems to me that the only thing you can really say is if something is in common usage. What do most people understand it to mean? Generally dictionaries are always struggling to keep up with popular usage and most people agree that once it’s included in a reputable dictionary it becomes “correct”. None are considered more reputable than the OED. Unfortunately, the OED doesn’t really contain phrases (like “beg the question”) but rather has a hard enough time keeping up with words.
I haven’t been to many university faculty cocktail parties, but I don’t imagine that many of them could use the adjective bootylicious without some :rolleyes:
However, you may be interested to note that that very word was added to the OED in September 2004.
A less ridiculous (and possibly more analogous) example would be the noun latte which is commonly accepted to mean espresso with a significant amount of milk. Of course formally latte just means milk, as you would no doubt discover if you went into café in Italy and asked for one. Technically what you want is a caffe latte.
Again, though, latte was added to the OED.
Common usage or nothing, sez I.
It has to fall into the common usage among academic-types. I’m unaware of the precise standards, if any. You are trying to imply that common usage among hundreds of millions of people is easier to set standards for?
Yes, we’ve been debating this point exactly. Perhaps you can catch up a bit.
I don’t subscribe, I’m afraid, but I suspect it’s listed as slang. I’ve made a few points about both slang and lexographers. Perhaps you can catch up a bit.
No. Formally, latte does not mean “milk” in English. It means “milk” in -Italian-. Informally, it refers to a cafe latte, as you noted.
I agree; however, common usage isn’t “usage among the common folk”. It’s “usage common among scholars”.
Now, look, people. We aren’t debating how we’d like things to be, here. Let me spell out the way things actually are.
Language is learned from a number of sources. There’s what we learn from our general environment, like from reading and talking to people. And there’s what we’re taught explicitly, like from school and Sesame Street episodes.
The people who teach us things explicitly are called “teachers”. In many modern societies, these people go through a more-or-less rigorous training and certification process. A large portion of their specialized knowledge is gained in a university, as part of this process.
Where do teachers learn their specialized knowledge? Why, from other teachers! Those university teachers not only teach language professionals how to do their job, but also over the course of their careers write textbooks, lecture at seminars, attend conferences, and go to faculty cocktail parties.
As a result, a small group of academics - the language pros and the people they interact with professionally - exert a greatly disproportionate amount of control over the language.
While, as humans, they are amenable to change, they maintain rigorous standards among themselves. Their environment, as well, contributes, as they are expected to maintain precise standards both for teaching and publication. As a result, change in the formal rules of language come slowly. They are necessary, of course, but the slow rate maintains a baseline standard necessary for the slow process of educating the next generation.
In today’s society, mass media spreads informal usages very quickly and thoroughly. This is both good and bad from the linguist’s standpoint. It means that many usages are easier to track, and it tends to blur regionalisms. On the other hand, the fast pace of change creates fad usage, which clutters the language.
By classifying language as slang or idiom before integrating it fully into the language, a buffer is maintained and the central rules of language are protected from faddish manipulation. Tracking and recording slang and idiom is important, of course, as such usage is common 
and clear understanding is important.
“Begging the question” has hung around as idiom without passing into correct use - which is what the OP asked about - for longer than most phrases. This is because it meets a natural resistance among academics, who tend to think of the phrase as reserved. Regardless of this, I suspect that another generation or so will finally remove the stigma from the informal use entirely, but for now I’d play it safe for anything professional.
AHA! I think I spot the root of all the problems in this thread.
The trouble is that ‘common usage’ means different things in different contexts; academics may consider it to formally mean ‘common among scholars’ (how like them to have their own formal definition ), to everyone else it (quite reasonably, I think) means ‘in common use’.
In which case, we can go back to your first statement in this thread:
And I can say: No, you assume incorrectly, at least as far as your formal definition of ‘common usage’.
This thread isn’t just about correct formal usage - perhaps if the OP had asked a question about the journal of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, it would be appropriate to limit the discussion to what does and does not represent correct form, but the question was about Discover Magazine, published by the Disney Corporation.
About halfway into this thread I began wishing that the reference I found had been in the NYTimes or Wall Street Journal. Yet, in spite of the fact that Discover Magazine is published by Disney, it’s not like it’s People Magazine. If I’d have seen the phrase used there, I’d never have brought it up at all. 
As I’ve thought about the common usage of this phrase (by “common folk”) I came to the conclusion that there is probably a very small percentage of people who even know there is a formal usage of the phrase. I know and interact with a lot of people, I can only think of two people I know (one lawyer and one teacher) that might know enough to raise an eyebrow if I used the phrase to mean “invites the question” or “raises the question”.
Rosco knew the combo and had been repeating it nervously, over and over. By the time he passed out from taxing his delicate nerves, Luke knew it by heart.
Sorry, still too vague for me. As a matter of fact, I’m an academic-type (though not faculty) and I also hold a degree in Linguistics. Is it enough if I consider a word or phrase formal or correct? If I’m not enough, how many of my colleagues need to?
Unfortunately, neither do I. Just out of curiousity, theoretically, what if it didn’t list it as slang? Where does that leave your point? Or is the OED not enough of a authority for you?
Oh and stop telling me to “catch up”. It’s really obnoxious.
As much as you might hope that there were, there is no Académie Française here in America for English. What is “correct” is not as cut and dry an issue as you would like for it to be. In fact, the only way in which “correct” has any meaning is perhaps in publications where an editor has to make a decision to either allow or reject a word or phrase as correct/appropriate. Yes, teachers also get to make this decision about grammar in their students’ papers. Personally I’d put more influence on the editors than the teachers. The Linguists at my university would tend to agree.
If something is allowed in the New York Times or even Discover Magazine, I’ll accept it as correct. These “academic-types” don’t have the control over the language that you think they do. The prescriptive linguists want to, though the descriptive linguists realize they don’t.