From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Arguing about language
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 20:14:22 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.141309.27026@news.columbia.edu> gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) writes:
>In article <1992Nov18.063613.2724@Princeton.EDU> roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:

>>And when there is a clear subtext to their assertions -- namely that
>>they are in tune with those old standards, and that they can identify
>>the barbarians by this or that shibboleth  [I know, I know] -- I
>>have no compunctions about pointing out their agenda.

>Oh please.  Gimme a break.

No, sorry.   I won't pretend this isn't an issue.

A well-documented issue.  Read Newman or Simon or Fowler for the 
things I mean.  For epithets like "semi-literate" and "ignorant." 
Read Lounsbury for the history of this process -- how every change
was blamed on the Americans, and before that, the Scots.  How this
was correlated with prejudice against the culture and worth of those
peoples.  How nowadays lots of changes are blamed or this or that 
region, or on people without "Sufficient" education to use their 
own language.

Read about this, Gabe, if only to learn where the style of language
critique you have affected comes from, and what has historically 
gone along with it.

>>But if they use their argument as a stick to beat on some social
>>group they don't care much for -- as usually happens in such situations --
>>I shall stand up to defend people who are using the language as they
>>know how.  

>I don't recall *anyone* in recent months picking on any particular
>social group.  Gaffes of grammar and usage tend to permeate all social
>groups.  No one gets discriminated against.

There you go again.  Things you don't like are "gaffes."   Even when they
are standard usage and effective communication.

and, no, "axe" is *not* found in all social groups.  As you bloody well
know.  It is a regionalism and a feature of Black English and some 
other dialects.

>>I shall also stand up to challenge the misinformation that
>>usually accompanies the "decline" arguments. 

>With all this standing up you're doing, you might as well just mount
>your computer terminal at chest level and be done with it.

It is at chest level when I'm sitting down...

>>But we don't always speak formal written prose.  We speak this or that
>>dialect -- always -- and in *some* settings, *some* situations, they
>>are perfectly acceptable.  

>Yes, indeed.  And there are certain things which one does in informal
>speaking or writing that one would not do in formal prose.  There are

So why do you simply call them "wrong"?

>other things that one would never do in either.  We seem to disagree on
>the latter category.

Indeed -- because there is ample evidence that one DOES do them.  That is,
if "one" is not synonymous with "Gabe."

>>Well, I usually get angry when the implications of the argument involve
>>*my* inferiority of linguistic use.  And since such arguments are
>>usually based on prejudice of the Edwin-Newmanesque sort, I don't
>>take them lying down.

>Uh huh.  Somehow I suspect that most of the characteristics we are talking
>about aren't readily found in your idiolect.

Lots of them are.  The "like" usage you were "KIDDING" about.  "None"
with a plural.  "Different than."  Generic-singular "they."  "You-all."
The objective personal pronoun used after the copula.  (Edwin Newman
wrote a whole, disgusting article in the Sunday Times about a *spoken*
instance of that one.)

Those are all parts of my speech patterns, and have always been.  Nor 
do I see any reason to stop using them, no matter how many "careful"
snobs decide they're not good enough.  And I see plenty of reason to
stop those snobs from browbeating people into insecurity about their
own mother tongue.

Roger

Newsgroups: alt.usage.english