RE: Death of the English Language

["Patricia McLaughlin" patsy.mcl@xxxxxxxx]

I meant to drop out of this listserv as soon as I found a taker for my old
XY books and disks--thank you very much, Otis Port!--but as with so many
things, I haven't got around to it. So: Think: Isn't there something we can
do to end or at least reduce the near-universal misuse of "begs the
question"? I'm teaching a writing class this term, and I feel as if I've
typed the line "COMMAS AND PERIODS ALWAYS GO INSIDE THE QUOTE MARKS" about a
million times to no effect. Lately sometimes I don't even notice--not to
mention correct and comment on--use of ≪it's≫ as a possessive and ≪its≫
as a contraction. Punctuation is used promiscuously, or maybe it's just
decorative. I can't seem to persuade them to turn off Autocorrect in Word,
so I'm always having to redact ≪defiantly≫ to ≪definitely≫. (That's how
Autocorrect "fixes" the misspelling ≪definatly≫--it took me years to
figure out what all the defiance was about.) And you know that, after
another decade or two of texting, it will all be moot anyway. But "begs the
question" is different: It's epidemic in spoken language, not just in print,
and people often misuse it with a sort of show-offy smugness that's
infuriating, given that they're using it to mean something it doesn't and
can't mean and never has meant. It's much worse than ≪hopefilly≫, which
grammar nazis used to complain about so much. The problem, as I see it, is
that it's hopeless to restore its actual meaning, because you'd need to be
able to explain ≪petitio principii≫, which you can't do without
introducing the idea of logic. Clearly impossible. Instead, I suggest a
campaign to ban ≪begs the question≫ entirely. Its misuse can be replaced
with "poses the question" or "raises the question," and its rare and
inevitably misunderstood proper use replaced with "avoids the question,"
"skirts the question," or "pretends to answer the question while actually
avoiding it." Given that we still haven't passed the equal rights amendment,
it's unlikely that we can amend the Constitution to outlaw ≪begs the
question≫. Maybe we can get to Oprah, or else launch a grass-roots campaign
like the one that persuaded SNL to hire Betty White. Or start with a
California referendum? Or maybe you have a better idea?



-----Original Message-----
From: xywrite-bounce@xxxxxxxx [mailto:xywrite-bounce@xxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of David Auerbach
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 1:54 PM
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Death of the English Language

The other philosophical subtext (or, rather, *an* other) is the distinction
between descriptivist and prescriptivist accounts of English (or any other
language for that matter.) Linguists working on the syntax and semantics of
natural languages are, by and large, engaged in a non-normative enterprise.
Moreover, they would fall on the floor laughing if you told them some of the
"rules" of English pushed by the run-of-the-mill prescriptivist. By now, I
imagine, it is well-known that such "rules" as never ending a sentence with
a preposition and prohibitions against split infinitives are simply
nonsense.
What isn't nonsense, as long as it isn't mistaken for the actual grammar of
English as she is spoke, are style books. (Which isn't to say that style
books are free to make any rules; just that it is good to have consistent
and justifiable rules in those contexts where style books make sense.)
Also on the normative front, it makes sense to resist diachronic alterations
of meaning, where those alterations are motivated by ignorance, sloppiness,
etc. and not by usefulness, gap filling, etc. I'm thinking here, as did the
OP, of "begging the question", whose misuse I find distressing and
depressing.




David Auerbach
auerbach@xxxxxxxx
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
NCSU
Raleigh, NC 27695-8103

On Oct 17, 2010, at 12:44 PM, Carl Distefano wrote:

>
> Reply to note from flash  Sun, 17 Oct 2010 12:29:59
> +0200
>
≫ http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Grammar_Nazi
>
> Amusing article. There's no doubt that people who gratuitously
> correct other people's grammar are tedious sorts, and I think the
> hyperbole about Nazis is mostly a colorful way of saing "Back off!".
> The philosophical subtext of "grammar Nazi", though -- the notion
> that "standard" or "educated" English implies totalitarian control
> -- would make an interesting essay topic, which might be framed by
> the observations that (1) the Western system of university education
> is descended from a regime in which a few Latin-speaking monks
> produced, and were the designated keepers of, a discrete body of
> canonical texts, and (2) the future of education is in doubt absent
> broad agreement on what comprise the core attributes of an educated
> person. This "totalitarian" notion springs, evidently, from the view
> that the Internet is, and should be, an anarchic environment with no
> organizing principle beyond its underlying protocols -- a view for
> which I have some sympathy, especially given the current assault on
> Net neutrality. Yet surely the "Nazi" trope is fundamentally
> meretricious. When a thousand flowers bloom, the smell of manure is
> hard to avoid.
>
> Let me hasten to add that the correction of grammar or syntax in any
> language, human or otherwise, in this forum is completely
> appropriate, on-topic, and established by custom and usage of many
> years' standing. If you attempt to do so, however, you had damn well
> better be right. Otherwise, no soup for you!
>
> --
> Carl Distefano
> cld@xxxxxxxx
>
>