Where should we draw the line on misused words?

You knew I was going to have to get into this one… :wink:

No. It is literally impossible. If most people use a word to mean X, then X is one of its meanings. Words are, by their nature, arbitrary symbols. They are sounds, or marks on a page or a screen. Nothing more, nothing less. We use them as media of exchange, much the same way we use money.

What things used to cost, and what words used to mean, are irrelevant to what they cost or mean now. How one group uses a word, phrase, or construction has no bearing on the value of that word, phrase, or construction for another group.

This doesn’t mean that today’s usages aren’t related to past usages, or that you can’t relate usages across demographics, but it makes no sense to point to some other time, or some other location, or some other group, and say that their dialect is “wrong” about what a word means or how it should relate syntactically to other words.

Now, if think the word “pig” refers to a horse, then I am truly mistaken about what that word means, but only because people will not understand me when I use the word.

I’m tempted to say you’re begging the question, but I’ll stay out of that snakepit. :wink: You say they make a mistake and are ignorant of a word’s correct meaning – but all that boils down to is saying that their usage differs from yours and from that of people you associate with or consider authorities. There is no other basis of comparison. You can’t point to logic, because there is no logical relationship b/t a sound-symbol and its mental associations. It’s a mere trigger. You can’t point to etymology, because words and syntax are constantly evolving and changing.

If person A says phrase X to person B, and person B correctly understands person A’s meaning and does not perceive any error, then who are you or I or anybody else to tell them that there has been some “mistake”?

If everyone understands it (and everyone does – I have never met an adult native speaker of English who would misunderstand the intention of “I ain’t no idiot”), then there is no gap between expression and interpretation. We could declare such usage “incorrect”, but what value would such a declaration have?

Absolutely not.

I encountered a range of reactions from my students as they struggled with academic English. Some were very concerned with what was “correct” and thought they should apply this standard universally. Others thought that being required to use standards other than the ones they used for conversation and casual communication was insulting, and a denigration of their heritage. Others merely resented the workload. Others adapted easily. Etc.

I told them it was simply a written dialect with its own history. Much of what they would learn would help them express themselves more clearly, fully, and precisely. Some of it was just tradition that no longer served a useful purpose. But it was a tool they would need to learn the use of, and when used properly it would serve them well.

Nope. Why would we? It would be like saying “I don’t care how many people pay $2 for a cup of coffee, a cup of coffee does not cost $2.”

Some have raised the issue of clarity on this thread, and that’s a valid issue. Getting students to understand that they were not communicating effectively when they used overly general stock phrases and cliches, ambiguous constructions, arcane and ephemeral (to their readers) lingo, weak or faulty arguments, and confusing punctuation – that was a challenge. I did not allow them to use “random” as a synonym for “unknown” or “irrelevant” in college-level essays, for example, and advised them not to use it in those senses in job applications and interviews; not because that usage was somehow “wrong”, but because it would likely be misunderstood by their audience or cause them as writers to be judged negatively.

Language changes. Different groups have different standards. The standards are real, and ignoring them has real consequences. But there is no inherently “right” dialect, written or spoken, for all times and places. You can declare a usage “wrong” all you like – but it is a meaningless declaration.

Ain’t is considered sub-standard so I suspect there is a standard after all. There are rules, for example, about capitalizing the word English. Records of common usage are called descriptive. Books on style and grammar rules are perscriptive. I like to use both resources and enjoy seeing changes make it from one to the other.

Right. I knew (at least somewhere in the recesses of my brain) that there are situations where “I will” is correct. But the point is that it’s incorrect (at least traditionally) to use “I will” in the same way that you use “He will.”

Although to tell the truth I mostly just throw “shall” into conversation to be funny. Sort of playing up the fact that I sometimes take myself a little too seriously.

Also, I probably should have said “one of the few remaining people in America who uses ‘shall’,” rather than “one of the few remaining people on earth.”

Well, at the least I was revealing my bias on the issue. Saying that there’s no such thing as “wrong” usage of language just bugs the hell out of me, even if I have to admit it’s kind of true.

However, it is possible for some one to use language incorrectly. As you mentioned yourself, it’s wrong if no one understands what they’re saying. But what drives me nuts is that someone can just keep on saying things the wrong way until it catches on, and then suddenly they’re right. (I know that’s more easily said than done, but still.) And not only that, but this can cause people to forget (or never learn) the original meaning of the word, which means they don’t understand it, or – even more agravating to me – mistakenly call it an error, when it’s used in that way.

For instance: I’ve been told repeatedly that I’m incorrect when I use the phrase “You’ve got another think coming” by people who are used to hearing the corrupted version “You’ve got another thing coming.” (For those who still don’t believe me, let me reiterate: It’s deliberately bad grammar for humorous effect! We’ve had this thread before! Cites were provided!) Yet clearly the corrupted version is more prevalent (Google gives 10,000 hit’s for “You’ve got another thing coming,” and less than 900 for “You’ve got another think coming.”) But enough people know that it’s traditionally “another think coming” that if I switch over to saying “thing”, I’m still going to be corrected, only then I’d be corrected by the people who actually know what they’re talking about. I can’t win!

I’ve heard that every few hundred years a language becomes unrecognisable from what it was and this is how it happens. Much as terrible grammer is annoying, it is something that has existed since first speach emerged and no matter how much a person may hate it, it is unlikely that this will change at this stage!

There is a joke–using the term “joke” very loosely–that describes someone drowning and shouting, “No one shall save me! I will drown!” Passersby thought the person did not want to be helped. Or something like that. If I got it wrong, rest assured that it wasn’t funny the right way, either.

And hell, that is funny. Well at least I think so

I agree completely…the language has to change over time. I think the way new words and usages are created to fill new roles as society changes is fascinating.

It just annoys me when the langauge changes, not to fill a gap in our ability to communicate changing ideas, but simply because the majority of people are too lazy or under-educated to get it right in the first place. “Begging the question” now to all intents and purposes means something completely different from what it used to, not because the logical concept changed but because too many people looked at the phrase and said “Begging the question? Hey, I’ll bet I know what that means!” It turns out that they didn’t know, but it’s too late now.

Of course the nature of language means that if this kind of thing bothers you, there’s nothing to be done but fume silently :slight_smile:

Yeah. I’m literally fuming myself. Isn’t it ironic?

I will never understand the ire directed at the figurative use of ‘literally’. It’s a meaningless intensifier, like “fucking” used as “very”.

Because there’s no word now that means what “literally” used to mean.

“Really?” Oops, M-W lists definition 2 as being an intensifier. Hmm. How about “veritable?” Nope, that’s accepted as emphasising metaphors, too. And to compound matters, “really” is used in sarcasm all the time to imply non-actuality. English is hard! :wink:

You could of course use “actually” if you literally feel that “literally” won’t really be understood as “veritable”; but truly, isn’t it easy to simple in reality to distinguish figurative use of “literally” from what you think is unquestionably the improper usage?

:slight_smile:

“Really?” Oops, M-W lists definition 2 as being an intensifier. Hmm. How about “veritable?” Nope, that’s accepted as emphasising metaphors, too. And to compound matters, “really” is used in sarcasm all the time to imply non-actuality. English is hard! :wink:

You could of course use “actually” if you literally feel that “literally” won’t really be understood as “veritable”; but truly, isn’t it easy in reality to distinguish figurative use of “literally” from what you think is unquestionably the improper usage?

:slight_smile:

you could tell them that they’re wrong for criticizing you on your usage, like we’re doing here. :wink:

i think the distaste comes from the fact that the word can literally be used to mean the opposite of its other definition.

Sure, Ramanujan, that was really helpful. :smiley:

I have a friend who just today said “I was trying to talk to him face to face.” when talking about how much a coworker had bothered him and how he tried to talk out the problem with him.

I didn’t feel like explaining to him that he had been face to face with him all that day and that he was looking for the phrase “man to man.”

Doesn’t bother me enough to say something, but all the time I hear stuff like that.

I am one of those people who is fascinated by our long-suffering language, and I love a good turn of phrase. Sometimes, I like to read those books that talk about “mistakes” that are made commonly, usually in a humorous way. It was in one of these books that I learned this rule. Since I am an American as well, it was the first I had ever heard of it.

The book did point out that this distinction doesn’t seem to have ever caught on in the USA and that, for the most part, only the British are likely to be aware of it, and few of them follow it these days.

-VM

I SO agree. I have some incredible (and some credible) problems with the language as it is today. I live near an urban area, and the word ignorant annoys me. It is used around here to mean “has an attitude” but the actual meaning of the word is “uneducated” So who is the ignorant one here?

Wodehouse was a master of the misplaced modifier. Bertie Wooser “smokes a pensive cigarette,” or “takes a moody mouthful of egg.” Of course it’s a planful breaking of the rules, and requires knowing the rules to be effective.

Why? I think Sample’s coffee analogy was on the mark. Does it bug you that a business is a failure if nobody shops there, but finally when people start buying the product the business is suddenly a success? Do you want to have a command economy, where a central authority declares which products are good and which are bad, and people are forbidden from buying the “bad” products?

Why, then, do you want a command language?

The word I use to describe standard English is “bourgeonics.” It’s the language you learn to speak if you want a middle-class job: no more, no less. If you want a job playing backup for a bluegrass band, your bourgeonics might hurt your efforts. If you want a job as a bouncer at a club, you might be better off speaking more slangily. But if you want a job at a law firm, polish that bourgeonics up.

If thou oppose the concept of the degeneration of language, I hope thou dost not use the second-person plural when referring to the second-person singular. I hope thou dost not call more than one child “children,” when the correct plural is “childer.” Otherwise, thou art inconsistent.

Daniel