NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/usage/english/8632

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From: [e-mail] (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: quite unique
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Reply-To: [e-mail] (Roger Lustig)
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Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 19:50:13 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gabe M Wiener) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Roger Lustig) writes:

>>>>So we must only go by some undefined instinct?  Is that it?  No rules?
>>>>No methods of deciding?

>>>In a way, yes.  You go on the instinct of careful users of the language.

>>Right.  I agree.  But in practice, does this mean doing what they do
>>(speaking or writing) or does it mean doing what they say about
>>language?

>I have found for the most part that careful users of the language have a
>lot of valid and valuable things to say about it.

The HArper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage is a book-length counterexample.
The silliness contained therein is legendary.

Likewise, read Lounsbury for the history of writers' language dicta.

>>True enough.  But many good, forceful speakers *will* use those words,
>>especially in less-formal situations.

>Ah, but to anyone who is careful with their words, a word like
>"irregardless" will ring out as being sloppy.  Even in less formal

That's a pretty big generalization.  Many careful people have a
perspective different from yours -- it's just not all that important
what forms people use in the heat of conversation.

Try reading an unedited transcript of an interview sometime.  Many
extremely articulate people come off looking like fools this way;
they use sentence fragments, redundancies, sentences that get lost
halfway, the whole gamut.  And words like "irregardless."  Does it
matter?  Not in the least.  The listener (as opposed to the reader)
gets the message firmly and straightforwardly.

>situations, I doubt that you or I would use that word when there are
>so many other (and better) "good" words around.  As such, since

Again, it's not the uppermost thing in my mind when I'm speaking.
These things areonly distractions to people who worry about grammatical
forms and spoken usages a lot -- and that's a small portion of the
population.  When listening to someone, I usually pay attention to
content.

>careful speakers and writers will avoid it, it becomes a questionable
>judgment.

Unfortunately, the class of "careful speakers" is far harder to
identify than the class of "Careful writers."  Try listening to
your extempore speech on tape sometime; don't be too self-conscious as you
talk.

And all of this *still* doesn't touch the issue of colloquial speech,
which is what most of us speak most of the time.

Note that good dictionaries *do* indicate what words are appropriate
in colloquial speech only.  Note also that many of the very best
writers develop styles that deliberately include aspects of spoken
idiom, colloquialism, and slang.  Think of Benchley or Thurber or
Perelman at the New Yorker -- three utterly different writers, with
utterly different idioms, incredibly sensitive ears for language,
some of the most sensitive and careful editors (incl. Wolcott Gibbs
and each other), and, most important of all, a terrific sense of
propriety, of *when* to use a word and when to avoid it.

The appropriate use of words, the sensitive shifting of style and
idiom, etc. are keys to effective rhetoric.  There is no single
standard of acceptability for a given word or expression: one must
take the where and when and how and why into account, to say nothing
of the who and the to-whom.

>>>I've never once claimed that my preferences are the standard.  All my

>>But you've simply said "this is wrong" or "This is a misuse," without
>>alluding to the source of your opinion in preference.

>But at bottom, *everyone* knows that there are no objective realities
>here.  There are no "facts" about a dynamic such as language.  My

There are *tons* of facts about language.  Facts gleaned from studies of
the history of the language, facts from surveys of current usage.
Facts about regionalisms.  Facts about the evolution of usage.  Facts
about what careful and great writers and speakers have done.

>statements of "this is wrong" or "this is slovenly" translate to
>"This is something that careful, intellegent speakers of the language
>would generally avoid doing, and as such is not standard and should
>be avoided."

No, it does *not* translate to that.  You're not listening.  You're not
writing/speaking carefully.

"Wrong" and "slovenly" carry the force of moral or ethical or similar
judgments of quality and worth with them.  And such judgments are simply
inappropriate with regard to language.

Now, *you* may be taking a personal approach to "right" and "wrong"
in this matter, but you must be aware that others do not.  I refer
you to Edwin Newman and John Simon and the Harper folks, all of whom
immediately leap from "wrong" and "slovenly" to actual moral judgment
of those who speak in ways they don't like.  They say the worst things
about people who speak in utterly standard ways, who don't know the
tortured logical rules they think are the structure ofthe language.

Besides, in what other field does "right" or "Wrong" translate to
"this is what nice/clever/sensitive people do/don't do"?  C'mon.

>To my ears, "axe" is sloppy, as is "irregardless."  They
>are errors.  My opinion.  Sue me.

No, I'll correct you.  "This is an error" is not an opinion.  That's
true when you're talking about speech or typography or baseball or
logic or whatever.  It is an assertion of fact.

>>when you say "this is wrong," you imply that there is a standard
>>you are using that is something other than your preference.  When
>>I'm offered blue cheese, I don't say it's wrong.  I say I don't like it.

>No, but if there were a specific way that blue cheese is prepared by
>the most careful chefs, and some restaurant botches it, you might
>say something akin to "Hey, you served the cheese wrong."

Absolutely, and I'd have a standard to back it up with.  And it wouldn't
be an opinion, either!  It would be a fact: there is a clear
standard of cheese-serving, and you have violated it.

>>> To me, it's a dreadful usage.  That isn't going to stop a
>>>sizable population from using it, nor do I plan to spend time trying.

>>Foolish me.  And I thought your postings here -- saying "Usage X
>>is wrong" or "construction Y is a misuse of the word" were just that:
>>attempts to change people's language use.

>The only people who's language use I try to change are those whose
                 ^^^^^

Yo!  8-)

>documents I am given to edit.  In that vein, I take a redliner and
>strike and correct all those usages that I feel are wrong or that are
>not precise enough, etc.

I don't know where you edit, but that's counter to the principles
I learned.  I was taught that one changes language only if it is
absolutely necessary to do so: that "I feel it's wrong" is *not*
sufficient grounds for changing something.  It must violate a
clear standard (and, yes, house style is such a standard, but
most house styles don't address too many issues of usage) before
it gets changed.

>Had my goal in life been to reform the world's language use, I would have
>gotten my degree in English instad of Music.

Had you gotten a degree in English, you'd have learned that such reform
is counter-productive or futile....

>>Now we're cooking with gas!  You don't like these usages, and so you
>>don't use them.  As an editor, you might revise text to eliminate them
>>(depending on whose prose you were editing).  We're in complete
>>agreement here.

>Are we?  My POV has always been that what is considered "correct"
>English is that which is used by careful writers and speakers, which
>is generally a combination of what they were taught and what they
>acquire by intuition.  As such, there are no "standards" or rules such
>as what you've been beating the desk in search of.

Non-sequitur.  There are no standards such as one might state while
standing on one leg; but there certainly are standards.  There might
not be *one* correct usage in a given case, but there is often a *set*
of correct ones, an area that makes up the standard.  Yes, sometimes the
set is fuzzy; and, yes, the set changes as the purpose of the writing in
question changes.

>>(btw, I had a long talk with my editor last night; he and I came
>>to an agreement on their being a long list of things that we
                     ^^^^^ even Homer nods...
>>wouldn't do, but wouldn't edit out of other people's prose.  A
>>cardinal rule of editing, according to Eric, is that one should be
>>able to imagine the writer's voice.)

>Obviously.  If someone is writing in the style of Black English
>Vernacular, I for one am not going to make it the queen's English.

But BEV is wrong, as it contains the word "axe" (for "ask").  Or
isn't it?  You *do* have standards, and they're based on actual usage,
and the standards change as the type of usage - -the dialect, the
level of formality--changes.

You don't say "more unique" in a lecture or a textbook.  You certainly
can say it in informal speech or a piece of casual writing.

>>>As you said, it should be "like nobody else."  No verb with "like."  You
>>>can use a verb with "as" though.  That common error was brought to the
>>>public by the old Winston commercial.

>>Back to square one, I see.  If it's such an error, how come so many
>>of the "careful writers" use it?
>>I have examples from Southey, Keats, Emily Bronte,
>>Dickens (in a letter), and Darwin before me; Shakespeare and Newman and
>>William Morris examples are also found in OED.  Fowler says it's not
>>an error, but a matter of preference, Evans and Evans add EB 11th Ed.,
>>More, Sidney, Dryden, Smollett, Burns, Coleridge, Shelley, Thackeray,
>>Kipling, Shaw, Wells, Masefield, and Maugham, and state that "like"
>>as conjunction is always acceptable, and that those who object are in
>>a minority.  Evans and Evans also note that Furnivall, the great
>>scholar of the language in the 19th C, endorsed it.

>For goodness sake, I was KIDDING.  No need for a whole bibliography.

Well, the "Winston commercial" reference made me wonder.  You see, I'm
old enough to remember the shitstorm that the grammar queens in newspaper
columns and classrooms and so on brought down on those ads.  And, yes,
there was talk of moral corruption of our youth (as opposed to the
cigs themselves, guys?) and decay and standards and all that stuff.
Tout sans peur et sans recherche.

And no, they weren't kidding.  This was serious stuff.

>>Gabe, there are different KINDS of speech, which are used in different
>>situations, idfferent times and places, with different audiences.

>Perhaps, but if any of the members of the audience are what we are all
>calling "careful users of the language," they're going to be ticked
>off by usages such as axe, irregardless, and most unique, and whatever
>point you're making will be lost on them, so it is to one's advantage
>to use language as well as possible.

I see no reason to castrate my own speech to appease a bunch of
misinformed boobies who think that effective, expressive usages
are violations of some self-imagined standard.  And I see every
reason to stop them from trying to enforce their prejudices on
others.  As I have said, they may speak and write any way they wish --
but if they dare to tell me that my -- careful, believe me! --
language is beneath their personal standards, they will have my
wrath to deal with -- and I shall also stand up for those who
don't know any better than to be intimidated by these popinjays
who can't pay attantion to what people are saying because they're
busy taking away points on acrobatic skill and artistic impression.

You know, it's not just "axe" and "disirrefuckinggardless."  It's
using "none" with a plural, and the generic-singular "they", and
"pro-active" and "concertize" and "hopefully."  Anybody is welcome
to make decisions to use or not to use any of these, and to build
a style of writing that is to their own liking.  But if they think
that their prejudice is a suitable ground for judging *my* speech
and writing, then they are not careful writers -- they are fetishists.
They have lost sight of how speech and writing work, and what they
are for.

You speak of these "careful writers" as a class, as a sort of priesthood.
Most careful writers don't give a damn about other people's speech
and writing unelss they're in some way responsible for it.  And oddly
enough, the ones who *do* insist on judging the style of others tend
to do it on the most preposterous, ill-informed, poorly-justified,
and prejudicial grounds.  (See Edwin Newman on "y'know" for an
example of real prejudice--or any paragraph on language by John Simon.)
I don't owe those self-appointed priests anything.  It's not my
religion.

>There is a difference between
>the use of words like "humungous" and the like, things which are by
>their very nature characteristic of casual speech, and words like
>"irregardless" which are generally considered to be incorrect.

And yet the situations in which you'd use them are almost identical!
What situations are those?  Informal speech in which humorous idiom
is acceptable.  The same situations that, say, allow distortions of
pronunciation for emphasis or irony or the like.

>>>>>    "I enjoyed the Symposium.  it was a unique opertunity to hear so
>>>>>     many Schoenberg scholars in one place."
>>>>>Now, was it just an unusual symposium?  or was it truly one of a kind?
>>>>In this case, who cares?
>>>YOU, I should think!
>>Why?  What difference does it make?

>Because if it had been an interesting symposium, I would assume you would
>want to order copies of the papers.

That would be true even if there was going to be another one five years
hence -- or had been another one five years ago.  This comes close
to making the point of my essay: "unique" is generally used when one
wishes to intensify a good quality.

>>On the contrary, Gabe: I WANT to know why you say the things you say.
>>You tell me what you think is right or wrong, but you don't tell me how
>>you got there.

>As I said now, and as I've said before, something is wrong in my mind
>(and in my redliner) when it strikes me as something that careful users
>of the language would not generally do.

But you don't accept evidence to the contrary!  And you don't qualify
you remarks as being relevant to the written idiom only, which thiss
passage suggests that they are.

>>weren't you imprecise in using "Wrong" when you meant "not my style"?)

>No, because very often I edit documents which are not in my style in any
>way, yet contain nothing wrong.  They're just not the way I'd write.

It's still imprecise, though, because there's no accepted meaning (
certainly not among careful writers!!!!) of "Wrong" that derives strictly
from such an informal heuristic as your gut.  When we say "Wrong" we
have a standard of what's right, by golly.

>That doesn't mean that I turn them into my style.  I do correct any
>flagrant errors however.

And the things you "feel viscerally" are wrong.  There's a difference.

>>>"Hit yourself in the head with a
>>>two-by-four" and "can't you read?" and "aren't you bright enough to
>>>figure it out"....that's contemptuous.

>>Only in self-defense, my friend -- and, as it turns out, against your
>>imprecise language.  You were using mighty odd terms to express opinions
>>with.

>Not really, since we're dealing with a field in which there *are* no facts,
>only opinions.

You keep saying that as though it were true.  There are perhaps *too many*
facts to make a snap judgment, but facts they are.

>That anything could be taken as fact is pretty ludicrous.

*anything*?  Even "These writers whose style I respect use this word in
this fashion"?   Even "This word has been used to mean that for 300 years"?
Even "People say this all the time and are understood perfectly well"?

Those are facts, Gabe.

Roger