By that argument, we should all just be able to say and write whatever we want however we want to, even if it's technically or factually incorrect, like Humpty Dumpty or Donald Trump.
Why bother hewing to "elitist" rules of grammar and accepted spellings, being that it's just prescriptivism?
How does one decide objectively if something is just plain wrong, or merely prescriptive?
Case in point: "premises". So many people treat this singular noun as a plural and use horrors like "on-premise", which is so utterly wrong that it is painful for me to look at. What's worse is that "premise" is a real word and an entirely different thing and is most definitely not the singular of "premises".
This word came about (as many English words do) as a corruption of the Latin "praemissus", meaning something like "the aforementioned", and was used often in legal agreements for properties, and so became a word in itself that meant "the property".
Now we are corrupting it yet again, this time without the excuse of it being a different language, on the basis that "I'll say it however I please." People I have mentioned this to have told me that it is so difficult to get people to use the right word that they've just gone with "on-prem".
Now readers can take this comment as the rant of a "grammar nazi" or a pedant, but it wasn't meant that way, and I'll respond in advance with this: why is it not ok to identify something that is wrong? Because it's mere nitpicking?
Maybe so - but that's how matters devolve, over the decades, back to widespread ignorance and intolerance: one little oversight at a time.
Sorry, I didn't mean to get on the soapbox - sometimes it's just frustrating for those of us who are perhaps overly detail-oriented. But the world needs "pedantic" people like us more than it likes to admit.
> The double speak in your last paragraph undercut your post. :(
It's honestly not double-speak. I'm a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist. Words are defined by how people use them. I consider it a waste of time to complain that "everyone is using a word wrong" as long as the meaning is clear, which it is in this case.
I'm going to take a rosier view of prescriptivists and say they are a necessary part of the speaking/writing public, doing the valuable work of fighting entropic forces to prevent making our language dumb. They don't always need to win or be right.
That's the first time I've seen literally-as-figuratively defended from a historical perspective. I still think we'd all be better off if people didn't mindlessly use it as a filler word or for emphasis, which is generally what people are doing these days that is the source of controversy, not reviving an archaic usage.
Also, it's kind of ironic you corrected my use of "devolves", where many would accept it. :)
Why is it ok to be prescriptive with things like spelling of words but not grammar or the meaning of words? If people are using words in a way that doesn't make sense to the reader, such as changing the meaning of them to be the opposite like the word factoid, it's not the reader that is wrong by pointing out that the word has a different meaning than intended. I have no problem calling out such use as being wrong.
You can argue that the usage of that term might be prejudicial, but calling it incorrect is at odds with the enlightened linguistic descriptivism we're all so enamoured of. :)
I get what you are saying, but this is a bit hypocritical. The very act of arguing and pushing for new terms, and trying to clarify language is in fact OK and even encouraged, even if one is a descriptivist. Even the most passionate "let language do what it will" person will agree that at some point you can't have every word collapsing into every idea.
I agree with your premise but I think it's generalizing, there are contexts where it is pedantic and insubstantive. Language evolves and not always the way the purists would have it.
I don't believe language prescriptivism has any merit. Words have value because they imply a meaning and if I can use a word, and you understand my meaning when I use that word, the word has value.
All the "incorrect" uses of those words are fine and are a part of the language. Outside of prescriptivism, that's just the use of the language, not misuse.
This is not the first time I have seen this but it is actually quite commonly used / mistake. I wonder if 20 years from now the word premise would have a different meaning.
The problem with that last bit is it’s just a prescriptivist rant. You can complain as loud as you like that people are using language wrong, if enough people use it like that the dictionary gets updated.
I agree...I find myself on both sides and that's why I presented both sides. I've decided that I want to learn as much from the prescriptivists as possible, since I find the evolution of language to be a fascinating topic. But I've also decided that I have very little interest in correcting people, so I try to vary my behavior contextually. I do my best to avoid mistakes in grammar in my own speech, but I don't correct other people that use them. And I try to use as much language precision as I feel the listeners are able to grasp.
It's almost like a client-capability protocol upgrade in the tech world...if you can use the enhanced protocol, you can benefit from it. But if your client (the person you're speaking to) doesn't understand the subtlety of your word choice, it's pointless and potentially confusing to choose the more advanced usages. So I fall back to the common usages that tend to bother prescriptivists.
But since this forum seems to be the more capable, here's one departure that people might find interesting. "All intensive purposes" is a malaprop, a specific language error that's almost never considered to be correct. But they can be fascinating examples of how we make sense of the world. My mother was a child psychologist for 30 years and collected malaprops from the children she saw. Children, especially those who have not yet started to read, have very small vocabularies and learn words phonetically from those that speak to them. When they encounter words that they don't know, they try to make sense of them from the context in which they're used and the similar words that they've already learned. This is a surprisingly effective technique, but often results in some interesting mistakes that surface as malaprops. My favorite example was a child that thought that Alzheimer's disease was actually "old timer's" disease. From that one mistake, you can really see how children approach unfamiliarity in their world.
If you're arguing over technicalities, you are inherently adopting a prescriptivist approach.
There are two possible approaches to your sentence and neither renders it grammatically correct. A prescriptivist would dismiss it as not being allowed by any rules while a descriptivist would point out that it defies both common usage and intelligibility.
> Like it or not, some attempts at communication will be perceived as correct, and some will not.
"Correct" is not the operative term. The only criterion is whether the speaker achieves his objective. If he intends to communicate clearly, that's one criterion. If he intends to bamboozle his listener(s), that's another.
The is no "correct" in language, any more than there is in evolution. And natural evolution is the closest parallel to language.
Take the word "sheriff" as an example. Am I right to say "sheriff", with that spelling and pronunciation, to mean the primary legal authority in a U.S. county? Perhaps. Am I right to say "scirgerefa", and then later, "shire reeve", meaning an officer of the king responsible for maintaining order in each shire, collecting taxes and so forth? Yes again. What's the difference? Time.
How about "decimated"? Does it mean substantially destroyed, or does it mean reduced by a tenth? That depends ... on time and place.
If you wanted to make language "correct", to meet an arbitrary standard, you would have to fight against the natural evolution of language. Lexicographers don't want to do that, and speakers don't either. Why would you?
You know what's terrifying? I've seen the first line of this quote used straight, by otherwise seemingly intelligent people, to shut down someone who rightfully pointed they're being manipulative with words.
Yes, language is evolving, and dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. But the idea that you can use words in whichever way you want, and any misunderstanding is the listener's problem, is just shitting at the idea of communication, and nothing but a thinly veiled power grab.
I'm generally sympathetic to descriptivism, but I encourage people to stick to prescriptivist rules in situations where departing from them would lead to reputational damage. (Then again, it's probably worse to be branded a pedant...)
Of course this situation is manifestly unfair to ESL speakers, or anyone whose lack of familiarity with formal English leads to misconceptions about their intelligence.
> It's not just that some people dislike it; it's simply wrong.
Language changes. Words frequently develop the opposite meaning of what they originally had—opposites seem to be semantically closer and more prone to switching than completely unrelated words. When a word changes meaning, it is not wrong to use it in the new way, and at some point it even becomes wrong to use it in the original way: if you used "terrific" to mean "inspiring terror", you would confuse most of your audience!
In this particular case what I find funny is that the author acknowledges that this semantic shift has been going on for hundreds of years and all that was holding it back was the language purists. According to their own account, when the purists fell out of favor in the 60s it was like a dam burst.
The "incorrect" usage recently overtook the correct one in published books:
By that argument, we should all just be able to say and write whatever we want however we want to, even if it's technically or factually incorrect, like Humpty Dumpty or Donald Trump.
Why bother hewing to "elitist" rules of grammar and accepted spellings, being that it's just prescriptivism?
How does one decide objectively if something is just plain wrong, or merely prescriptive?
Case in point: "premises". So many people treat this singular noun as a plural and use horrors like "on-premise", which is so utterly wrong that it is painful for me to look at. What's worse is that "premise" is a real word and an entirely different thing and is most definitely not the singular of "premises".
This word came about (as many English words do) as a corruption of the Latin "praemissus", meaning something like "the aforementioned", and was used often in legal agreements for properties, and so became a word in itself that meant "the property".
Now we are corrupting it yet again, this time without the excuse of it being a different language, on the basis that "I'll say it however I please." People I have mentioned this to have told me that it is so difficult to get people to use the right word that they've just gone with "on-prem".
Now readers can take this comment as the rant of a "grammar nazi" or a pedant, but it wasn't meant that way, and I'll respond in advance with this: why is it not ok to identify something that is wrong? Because it's mere nitpicking?
Maybe so - but that's how matters devolve, over the decades, back to widespread ignorance and intolerance: one little oversight at a time.
Sorry, I didn't mean to get on the soapbox - sometimes it's just frustrating for those of us who are perhaps overly detail-oriented. But the world needs "pedantic" people like us more than it likes to admit.
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