Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Thu, 10 Sep 1992 16:02:23 CDT
From:         "Natalie Maynor" <maynor@RA.MSSTATE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: prescriptivism again
Comments: To: WORDS-L@uga.cc.uga.edu

> Ask everyone you meet at lunch tomorrow.  As I said, I think common usage

I never claimed that the majority of people I eat lunch with use
"disinterested" to mean "uninterested."  In fact, I'm pretty sure that
I said just the opposite -- that the people I spend most of my time with,
including eating lunch, use "disinterested" to mean "unbiased" -- if they
have occasion to use the word at all.  When I said the majority, I meant
the majority of the population of this country.  Although it's easy to
forget when you live in a university environment, the majority of U.S.
citizens do not have PhD's in English.  Of the people I'll eat lunch with
tomorrow, probably 100% will have PhD's, most in English or a foreign
language.  Possibly there will be one person at the table with an M.A. only.
It's not that I seek out company of people who have PhD's.  It's just that
I rarely have occasion to run into people without PhD's, except for my
students.  That's the way life is in a small town dominated by a university.

> here must be different from common usage over there, though you insisted
> they were they same.

I don't think I insisted they were the same.  When did I do that?  I don't
remember making any statement about British usage of "disinterested."

> There's clearly some major cross-purpose in this
> discussion that we haven't sorted out yet, because you appear to contradict
> every single statement you make in the followup message explaining what
> you meant.

I haven't noticed that.  But then people with muddled brains rarely notice
that they don't make sense.  Can't help it, I guess.

> Here's the wording of the poll: "Have you heard of both of the words
> 'uninterested' and 'disinterested'."  Answer will either be "No", or
> you follow up with "What's the difference between them?".

Because the thunder is growing very close and I should turn off the
computer, I won't go into the methodological problems with your wording.
I do know a good bit about methods of fieldwork in linguistics, however,
and I can tell you that your wording would toss the results out as
unusable.

> > Raise the standard of English usage??  I'm not sure quite what that means.
>
>You seem to be saying that there is no point in teaching English at high-
>school because whatever children learn on the streets is correct by definition.

Among other problems in this statement, you've neatly hopped over a crucial
premise.  And I've never said that there's no point in teaching English in
high school.  But what do you mean by "correct"?  The language a child
learns on the street is appropriate for some purposes, not appropriate for
others.  I'm a great believer in teaching SAE to anybody who plans to do
just about anything.

> I'm still waiting to hear you say whether you equate education with
> prescriptivism.  I know you either disapprove or see no point in the
> latter; I wonder whether you feel the same about the former.

No, I don't equate education with the kind of prescriptivism we've been
talking about.  I hate that some teachers seem to be prescriptivists.
This is true not just in English.  Prescriptivist French teachers, for
example, teach usage that doesn't work very well on the streets of France.

>  I'm left
> with the impression that you're of the Dr Spock school of linguistic
> child-raising.

I don't think you would find a reputable linguist anywhere who would
disagree with me on this.
   --Natalie (maynor@ra.msstate.edu)
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