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[gloomba]

I'd like to talk about prescriptivism vs. descriptivism in linguistics.  This has been bugging me for a while.

See, my mom teaches high school English, and as such I was brought up with the idea that there was correct and incorrect grammar, and if you didn't know the difference, it was basically over for you (I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea).  But when I took some linguistics classes in college, it seemed that that idea had fallen out of favor, and grammatical mistakes were considered a natural evolution of the language.  That is, if enough people are making the same mistake, it becomes an idiom or something and an accepted part of the language.

I can understand that approach, and obviously languages do need to evolve with the times.  My problem, I guess, is that in this form of evolution, there is no process of natural selection, no survival of the fittest.  There are some mutations that don't make communication any easier or clearer, but are used by a lot of people just because they don't know any better.  I'm talking about things like "could of," "irregardless," and "could care less."  All of those are ungrammatical and/or just make no sense, and they all have syntactically valid alternatives that do make sense.  So quite frankly there's no reason to use any of them.  But enough people do that they'll probably end up recognized in dictionaries soon (if they're not already), and while you and I know that dictionaries are descriptive by nature, thousands of people will use them to justify their use of these ridiculous terms, and we'll no longer have a leg to stand on when complaining about them.

So my conflict is that I recognize the necessity and inevitability of a language to be constantly changing, but I don't think we should just blindly accept any change.  I'd like to be all liberal artsy about it and say "ooh, isn't it interesting how 'could have' became 'could of,'" but considering that I do actually have to speak the language in question, I'd like it to be as clear and efficient as possible, and so I think a line has to be drawn somewhere.  But that sounds awfully prescriptivist of me -- which in linguistic circles, I understand, is pretty much considered fascism.  So I'd be losing a lot of humanitarian street cred.

Am I just a stodgy old fossil out of touch with the times?

Yours,
Troubled in Tallahassee

[wombat]

Am I just a stodgy old fossil out of touch with the times?

Yes. Eventually you will die, and no one will remember when those usages were stigmatized. History proves this. In fact, many words and usages that you consider standard fall into that same category and you don't even know it.

P.S. You haven't read all the board archives, have you?

[gloomba]

Yes. Eventually you will die, and no one will remember when those usages were stigmatized. History proves this. In fact, many words and usages that you consider standard fall into that same category and you don't even know it.

P.S. You haven't read all the board archives, have you?

No.  I apologize for not reading all 99,700 posts in advance.

I do realize that many words and usages fall into that category.  There are certainly plenty of things in English that don't make any sense.  Sure, they're considered standard now, but again, that's not necessarily due to merit.  If people hadn't put up with them at the time, maybe we would have had better alternatives, and the current form of the language wouldn't be the huge mess that it is, with hundreds of exceptions to annoy people trying to learn it.

[Doc]

Wombat was not trying to be a dick to a stranger goomba This is a subject we visit often.

And one I could care less about, in the most accurate interpretation of the term.

[wombat]

This is a subject we visit often.

Lord knows, don't we. I suppose this is an inevitable result of being a group of imaginary people with slightly higher intelligence than usual.

Because I am retired from this subject and am tired of the damned flashbacks, I am really going to try not to read this thread, so y'all behave yourselves and try not to need moderation, OK? You know how bloody these grammar discussions can get.

[gloomba]

Wombat was not trying to be a dick to a stranger goomba This is a subject we visit often.

Please pardon my faux pas.  Still, I like to think that my post addresses the heart of the matter a little more directly.

[Dexter]

See, my mom teaches high school English, and as such I was brought up with the idea that there was correct and incorrect grammar, and if you didn't know the difference, it was basically over for you (I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea).  But when I took some linguistics classes in college, it seemed that that idea had fallen out of favor, and grammatical mistakes were considered a natural evolution of the language.  That is, if enough people are making the same mistake, it becomes an idiom or something and an accepted part of the language.

Like dictionaries, linguists describe, not prescribe.  High school English teachers, on the other hand, prescribe.  This is the natural order of things.

I can understand that approach, and obviously languages do need to evolve with the times.  My problem, I guess, is that in this form of evolution, there is no process of natural selection, no survival of the fittest.

There actually are observed laws governing language change, but they generally tend to cover phonological drift, not syntactic or semantic drift such as you seem to be decrying, since phonological drift tends to occur in a consistent manner.  For example: Grimm's law, Verner's law, and the Germanic spirant law.

So my conflict is that I recognize the necessity and inevitability of a language to be constantly changing, but I don't think we should just blindly accept any change.

But where do you draw the line?  After all, both you and your English-teacher mom probably use forms that would have been considered incorrect at some point in the past.  Should we be speaking English as it was spoken a hundred years ago?  Two hundred?  Should we perhaps be speaking Shakespeare's, or Chaucer's English?

Am I just a stodgy old fossil out of touch with the times?

This possibility cannot be ruled out.

[CortJstr]

Plus the people doing the deciding can't even be consistent. They spend 12 years teaching kids MLA, but in my experience in the real world everybody wants AP or Chicago. In one "whom" is always optional, in another "townhouse" has to be two words, and last I checked all of them still insist on capitalizing "internet" for reasons that nobody has ever been able to adequately explain.

Who can keep this straight?

[gloomba]

Well, I'm not advocating a sweeping reform of the language or anything.  I do generally favor a descriptivist attitude; there are just certain phrases that drive me crazy.  But how can I tolerate some non-standard syntax and not others?  That is my conflict.

P.S. Yeah, capitalizing "internet" is ridiculous.
AP style blows.  I
majored in journalism.
Fuck AP style, man.

[Nabubrush]

P.S. You haven't read all the board archives, have you?

This is optional now? I thought people couldn't join until they read them all and passed that 500 question test. Did Jough retire that?

I don't think I'm going to follow this thread, either. It's like freshman college philosophy. It's really, really interesting, unless it isn't.

[gloomba]

I withdraw the question!

[jaydub]

Oh no!  You don't get off that easy!  I haven't even gotten to my allusion of linguistics to circle-jerking.

[side_show]

Skub!  Skuuuuuuuuub!

[theinevitable]

but, but...

linguistics is awesome though....

[CortJstr]

Skub!  Skuuuuuuuuub!

You're pro Skub? And to think I used to respect you.

Anti-Skub 4 Life, bitches.