From: dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: "Get used to it."
Date: 8 Apr 92 17:05:55 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <1992Apr8.032457.26425@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca> userisra@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca (Mark Israel) writes:
>In article <204469@unix.cis.pitt.edu>, dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) writes:
>
>> I just think that your *basis* for deciding which changes are "good" 
>> and which are "bad" is somewhat arbitrary.
>
>   Well, if you have any suggestions on how we might make prescription
>less arbitrary (without scrapping it altogether), I'm listening.

OK.  In the meantime, I think maybe I didn't quite understand what you meant
by "prescriptive".  See below.

>> Personal aesthetics are wonderful and necessary, but it's not very 
>> friendly to enforce them on other people.
>
>   Whom, exactly, are you accusing of "enforcing" personal aesthetics?
>The only people I know who *enforce* language rules are teachers and
>editors, and they usually enforce *consensus* aesthetics, not personal
>aesthetics.  

"Consensus aesthetics" is an oxymoron.  What teachers and editors enforce
are the prescriptions of the prescriptivists.  The only people I know who
*enforce* laws are police officers and jurists, but that doesn't absolve
the legislature of all responsibility.

>>> Would you tell a feminist:  "[Any sexist term whose use is diminishing]
>>> is here to stay.  Get used to it!"?   Would you tell a black person:
>>> "'Nigger' is here to stay.  Get used to it!"?  Would you tell a 
>>> homosexual:  "'Faggot' is here to stay.  Get used to it!"?
>>
>> Would you pick a relevant example?
>
>   Relevant to what?  

Questions of usage, as opposed to questions of manners.

>   The above examples are relevant to the question:  "Should language
>ever be prescribed?" 

But you've changed the sense of "prescription" from what you claimed to
be talking about above.  This is not a suggestion; this is a First
Amendment question.  Unless, of course, you're simply taking a roundabout
way of saying that you find the use of certain words (*independently* of
the manner of their use) to be distasteful.  But usage is about how you
use them, not whether you use them at all.  At least, that's what they
always told me was the subject of questions about usage.

You said above that you're merely making suggestions.  If that's the
case, we have no quarrel.  But that's not a case of prescriptivism,
not according to what I take "prescription" to mean.  Prescription is 
stronger than suggestion or recommendation.  Prescription establishes
rules, not guidelines.  If you were to suggest that I not use words like
"nigger", "faggot", or (say) "bimbo", then my response would probably be
something along the lines of "Of course; what do you take me for?".  But
if you suggest that there is no correct *usage* of those all-too-common
English nouns, then I think you must be mistaken.  Again, you're confusing
style with usage.

And, of course, if you were to get a law passed that makes it *illegal* to
use those words, then that would be "prescription" (or "proscription") in
a broad sense, but not a question of correct usage.

>   They are also relevant to the question:  "Is 'Get used to it!' an
>appropriate attitude to take every time someone else fights a battle that
>*you* happen to consider not worth fighting"?
>
>> You seem to have deleted the part of my article where I distinguished 
>> between "good style" and "correct usage",
>
>   Sounds like a semantic distinction to me.

Certainly.  They mean different things; that makes it a semantic distinction.

If you're only making suggestions, and I'm only concerned with usage (and
not style), then perhaps we can take off our gloves and part amicably.

>> I wouldn't tell Mother Theresa to "get stuffed", either, but it would 
>> be impeccable usage.
>
>   But if someone *else* told Mother Theresa to "get stuffed", and she
>indicated that she didn't appreciate that sort of language, would you
>accuse her of being "not very friendly" and "enforcing her personal 
>aesthetics on other people"?

Again, this is the wrong question.  Objecting to the *meaning* (either
denotative or connotative) of someone's utterance is only tenuously related
to questions of usage.  Or so I've always thought; if common usage :-) in
this newsgroup is different, I'll go by that.

>> Look, I wince as much as any of you when my colleagues use "input" as a
>> verb, or "data" as a singular noun, or (gack) "conferencing" as a 
>> gerund.
>
>   I don't wince.  Singular "data" has been with us about as long as 
>passive "hopefully".  (It was used by Winston Churchill.)  Your criteria
>seem as arbitrary as mine.

Of course they are.  Those are my personal tastes, and they won't change
just because singular 'data' will soon be (or is already) correct usage.
But I don't confuse not liking it with thinking it's bad for the language.
I wouldn't like to lose all those loverly, quirky irregular verbs we have,
either, but it would (probably) be good for the language.  Losing the case
structure certainly doesn't bother me, although I imagine it had a lot of
Anglo-Saxon pedants hot under the collar.

>   How would you rewrite the following sentences?
>
>"I input 'Helo there, world' to my spelling checker; when it flagged 
>'Helo', I put in the missing 'l'."

Substitute "typed" (or other specific mode) for "input"; "to" becomes "into"
or "as input to".  Or, you could say "fed" or some other euphemism.

(But this one doesn't bother me as much as some...)

>"I conferred with my sysadmin about the best teleconferencing software
>to get."   

"Teleconferencing" isn't the same as "conferencing"; it was a new coinage
for a new thing, whereas we already had the perfectly good verb "to confer"
before people starting saying "to conference".

>   I too regard "hopefully" as a lost cause.  But when I see a debate
>about it, I may nonetheless mention that I consider it to have been a
>change for the worse.  If I see a debate about Normans, I may contribute
>to that, too.

But I doubt that you would *prescribe* behaviour for those Normans...


-- 
          David M. Tate            |"The man who hath no music in himself
     dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu       | Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sound
  A poem should be dumb, / As old  | Is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils
 medallions to the thumb.-MacLeish | 	Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice", A.V
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,soc.culture.british