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    David Foster Wallace: Tense Present

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    David Foster Wallace: Tense Present

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    28 просмотров20 страниц

    D.F. Wallace Reading)

    Загружено:

    dj_salinger6212
    David Foster Wallace: Tense Present

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    FOLIO Eustace forbs. Subsequent. hive, Produce. aclie Adin. Unlue, Devineata Equceswih faregs Betewccer yace and F IADYSROOM | confauel recacesinate. sas - te onan ee ense Fresent ESwmschews eek Dora cracy, English, and the pesiy Sestol Ponca Coopinetoas cy, Engiisn, Sn ars over Usage Se reemernaa ae BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Not too good of a Sits" tpuicn:proporicns roparsenesupame Feushiy Thbsngusing ational ket Bipron oe Je indiatd in bald ype ont David Foner Wallace sa sonentucng editor eo Magper's Maun andthe acho of the nosed Ignite Jest and ther 0 "His mourns pie fortis naga, "Brg Tere ath Hideows Mem” ebPeared m de Cecober (994 isa Discussed in this ean AA Dictionary of Modern American Usage, by Bryan (Gamer. Oxford University Pres, 1998.723 pages $35 A Dietonary of Modern Eratsh Usage, by H. W. Fowler, Oniord University Press, 1926. Rev. by Sir Emest Gowers, 1965, 725 pages. ‘The Language Instn: How te Mind Creates Language, by Steven Pinker. William Morrow and Company, 1994. 494 pages Webster's Dicionary of English Usage, E,W. Gilman, ed Merriam. Webster Inc, [989.978 pages. Usage ard Abusage: A Guide to Good English, by Eric Partridge. Hamish Hanlton, 1957. 392 pages Webse’s Thi New Intemational Dieionary ofthe Eng- ish Language, Philip Gove, ed. G. SC. Merriam Company, 1961. 2,682 pages Dilige et quod vs fe. =ST. AUGUSTINE ‘id you know that probing the seamy underbelly of U.S. lexicography reveals ideological srife and contra- very and intrigue and nastiness and fervor on a nearly hanging-chad scale? For instance, did you know that some moder dic- tionaries are notoriously literal and others noto- riously conservative, and that certain conserva- tive dictionaries were actually conceived and designed as corrective responses to the “comnup- tion" and “permissiveness” of cer- tain liberal dictionaries? That the oligarchic device of having 2 spe- cial "Distinguished Usage Panel... of outstand- ing professional speakers and writen is an attempted compromise herween the forces of egalitarianism and craditionalism in English, but that most linguistic liberals dismiss the Usage Panel as mete sham-populism? Did you know thar US, lexicography even had a seamy underbelly? he occasion for this article is Oxford University Press's semi- recent release of Bryan A. Garner's A Dictionary of Modem American Usage. The fact of the matter is that Garner's Lire) dictionary is extremely good, certainly. the most comprehensive usage guide since B. W. Gilman's Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, now a decade out of date Its format, ike that of Gilman and the handful of other great American usage guides of the last century, includes eneries on individual worde and phrases and expostulacive small-cap MIN ESSAYS on any ise broad enough to warrant more general discussion. But the really dis tinctive and ingenious features of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage involve issues of thetoric and ideology. and style, and i is impossible to deserike why chese issues are important and why Garner's management of them borders on genius without ralking about the historical context? in which ADMAU appears, and this context urns out to be a ver~ itable hurricane of contraversies involving everything from technical linguistics to publie «education to political ideoogy, and these con- srovetsies take a certain amount of time to tunpack before their relation co what makes Garner’s usage guide so eminently worth your hard-earned reference-book dollar can even be established: and in fact there’ no way even to begin the whole hareowing polymeric discussion without taking a moment to estab- lish and define the highly colloquial term sNoor. From one perspective, a certain irony attends the publication of any good new book on American usage. It is that the people who are sping t0 be interested in such a TYEE tock are ako the people who are least going to need it, ie, hae offering counsel on the finer points of US. English is Preaching tothe Choie. The relevant Choir here comprises that small percentage of American citizens who actually care about the current status of double movals and ergative vetbs. The same sors of people who watched Story of Enash on PRS (tvice) and read W. Safize’s ‘column with rheit half-cal every Sunday. The sorts of people who feel that spe: cial blend of wincing despair and sneering supe- Tiorty when they see EXPRESS LANE—10 FEMS OR LESS or hear dui use as a verb ot cel that the fo must surely 8 motel chain ave been ignorant of the meaning the advent of online data Daven, Garmer ba acer to fa amore camper of steel ‘han did Gila, 1996 Now overs Modern Englih Usage tc lea extremely HARPER'S MAGAZINE APR 201 ‘squeals hat even ely tried "leicoe Cimporal backdrop" in one athe middle deaf soul epee nt prearable) sore ‘The above fbr motivated by he fat that his releve nment slnapeancers and/or vincen ve, heeees “lateral content de eyed nn ploce of writing tht hopes to heed of ny onder "Taick Think cof suppuoute. There are lots of epithets for peo. ple like this—Grammar Nazis, Usage Needs, Syncax Snobs, che Languaye Polive. The term [ was raised with is SOOT! The word might be slightly self-mocking, but those other terms are ‘outright dysphemisms. A sNoOT can be defined as somebody who knows what dvsphemism means and doesn’t mind lecting you know tg {submit thae we SNOOTS are just about the last remaining kind of trly elitist nerd. There are, granted, plenty of nerd-species in today’s America, and some of these ace elitist within their own nerdy purview (e.g. the skinny, car buncular, semi-autistic Computer Nerd moves instantly up on the totem pole of status when your sereen freezes and now you need his help, and the bland condescension with which he performs the two occult keystrokes that unfreeze your screen is both elicist and situa- tionally valid). But the sNooT’s purview is interhuman social lie itself. You don't, afterall (despite withering cultural pressure), have to tuse a computer, but you can’t escape language: Language is everything and everywhere; it’s what Tets us have anything to do with one another; i¢'s what separates us from the animals Genesis Li:7-10 and so on. And we swocrs know when and how to hyphenate phrasal adjectives and to keep participles from dan- sling, and we know thar we know, and we know 300 Go) (ihc) i dais ceriever'sncler faye niche ‘ane clear a sell ernest nag fanatic the nvt of peson shove iden of Suaday fun love Took for missin Sfie'seok= ‘sa's prove itll This rrier= rfamilpiereughly 70 percent SKOOT, which term luelf Gerives HIV prevent how very few other Americans know this stuff bor even care, and we judge chem accordingly tn ways that certain of us are uncomfortable about, SNOOTS’ attinides about contemporary Usage resemble celigious/ political conservatives’ attitudes abour contemporary culture:t We com- bine a missionary zeatand a near-neurat faith in cour beliefs’ importance with a curmudgeonly hellin-a-handbasket despair ac the way English is routinely manhandla! and corrupted by sup- posedly educated people, The Evil is al around ts: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers and bursts of vosuish linguistic methane that make any sNcoT's cheek twitch and forehead darken. & fellow sNOOT [nov likes to say that listening to most people's English feels fike isbusot at of snacbedy each as-drag veers, When it rege (8S dacs, every tan) {hac 5 percent af chee nell gencupseaecollegetadent bare ever been tight, eg, what» laure inorvhy a miplacd on Iycan make a sentence confi watchin, rails. We5 are che Few, the at Everyone Else, THESIS STATEMENT somebody use a Suadivarius to pound ad, the Appualled AKEEP IN LANE FOR WHOLE ARTICLE and can be eff whac ¢his wacraic. Spit.” radition vs. eglitarianism in S. Foglish are at root political issues tively addressed only in article hereby A Democratic Spirit is terms a ene chat combines rigor and humility eas sionate conviction plus sedulous respect. for Iow have sens one parent ho (5.by proftasion ortemperament sr bothy a s¥o0T ny ry mom ia Comp teteher an Kaveri ermdial wage bok snd ieaSOOT of he moat rabid from tascronp, si deetig, inp.Tallbeiprund myhced on and intreeablesert Attend part isorfatfeniiyjoke being hss, he Blackboard; eshertshem te efthe enon Tam avout leat tue eishametwn hod boerdeforyents Mam braiowached win The kide ond up sored, bo of allzocrofwubttevaye He re and forme ‘ample, Femi supper Nudnikt of ur Time" depend don vhather or not you vere oe hese replace Tae ere i ymca at any exte~pl le the “uncom foreable” part Utonch cllege English parttime-mostiy Lis ret Comp, But Lam ale pho: Togiclly anal shou? ange dat srery semester the same hing Rippene The inatet hme read to denigrate Eno: Note Author nan hie aed vith” sind took umbrage et the gees ‘ion dating cer demon seraedthevery uals wished 5 Phen note that she sete cally repented EP pr tenner aa epost reviewes In very uch one sarily mentioned sp. Swootiude mun in farilon I ADMAU's Prefse, Bran Gae= ter mentions bot his faher and lneaved a ime: fame of sh dren made swage errr, Mom ‘ould pretend o hive coughing that would go on and on une fied she relevant error and eo rete Lev allryellirenie to pectond that your hil tatlly denying you oxygen by ‘peaking incorrecty Bae the realy hling hg ie that Fn ERPOLATION Ansomathingl'm all hutmare Ipeelled his een and drove ioe remembertbe ile thine 5 Underogin order allow dhe on) Fee tunder Dep ‘Brier Dog Bharier Dog el Eid was the seual author of thin song. Bat by thin me 'd been, ‘horoughybratomahed. And jue ‘Soutthenholecarsang along. Tt at sort of our fully version SP90 Botan WA) the convictions of others. As any American knows, this is a very dffcule spiric to cultivate and maintain, particularly when it comes to issues you feel strongly about. Equally tough is a DS.’ criterion of 100 percent intellectual integrity—you have to be willing to look hon- sty at yourself and your motive for believing what you believe, and to do it more ot less continually This kind of stuff is advanced ULS. citizen- ship. A true Democratic Spirit is up there with religious faith and emotional macurity and all those other top-of-the-Maslow-Pyramid-type qualities people spend their whole lives work- ing on. A Democratic Spirit's constituent rigor and humility and honesty are in fact 30 hard to maintain on certain issues that it’s almost irre- sisubly tempting to fail in wich some estab- lished dogmatic camp and to follow that camp's line of the issue and to let your position hard- en within the camp and become inflexible and z ta believe that any other camp Goal-orientated is either evil or insane and to spend all your time and energy trying co shout over them. I submis, then, chat it is indisputably easicr to be dogmatic than Democratic, especially about issues that are both vexed and highly charged. I submit further that the issues sur- rounding “correctness” in contemporary American usage arc both vexed and highly charged, and that the fundamental questions they involve are ones whose answers have to be “worked out” instead of simply found. Pea A distinctive feanure of ADMAU is that its au- : thor is willing to acknowledge that a usage dic- ae tionary isnot bible ot even a textbook bu rather we just the recoed of one smart person's attempts to 5 work out answers to certain very dificult questions. : This willingness appears to me to be informed by ‘ 1 Democratic Sprit. The big question is whether such a spirit compromises Garner's ability to pre- aie: senc himself asa genuine “authoricy" on issues of usage, Assessing Gamer’ book, then, involves vey trying to trace out the very weird and complica . cc relationship between Authority and Democracy facta in whar we asa culture have decided is English, moe ‘That relationship is, as many educated Ameri- + ee) cans would say sll in process at this time ssbeequent clase in he fel, & ‘a Saute Johnoen thn from Erle Partridge’ Usage and Diageo Oilman’ Webser F Garner proces pelling at aly numbers under ten. Tad ‘eat hav boon nada for any (27242 BARPERS MAGAZINE) APRIL 2001 ‘mught hat his le applic joe to osinesWiiigund tinal dina at 20. De gut ‘pone dspotandun) *Etr' Noe The arpe'ste manual proselber paling oat cll mambers up 100. Dictionary of Modem American Usage hhas no Buitorial Staff or Distinguished Panel. {t's conceived, researched, and serieten ab ovo nsque aa mala by Bryan Garnet: This isan interesting guy. He’s both a lawyer and a lexicographer (which seems a bit like being both a narcotics dealer and a DEA agent). His 1987 A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage is already a minor classe; now, instead of practicing law anymore, he goes around con- ducting writing seminars for J.D’ and doing prose-consulting for various juicial bodies. Garner's also the founder of something called the H. W. Fowler Society, a worldwide group of uusage-Treikies who like to send one another linguistic boners clipped from different periodi- cals. You get the idea. This Garner is one seri- ous and very hard-core SNCOT. The lucid, engaging, and extremely sneaky Preface to ADMAU serves to confirm Gamer's sNooTitude in fact while undercutting it in fone. For one thing, whereas the traditional usage pundit culeivates a sort of remote and imperial persona~-the kind who uses one or we to refer to himself —Garner gives us an almost Waltonishly endearing sketch of his own bbackuround: 5 realised early-—at the age of 157—thae my pr- mary intellectual interest was the use of the English language... fc became an all-consuming passion. 1 read everything I could find on the fubject. Then, on a wincey evening while visiting New Mexica at the age of 16, [ discovered Eric Partidge’s Usage and Abusage, [ was enthralled. Never bad held a more exciting book... Suffice ie tony that by the time I was 18, Thad commic- ted to memory mos of Fowler, Partridge, and their Although this reviewer regrets the bio- sketch's failure to mention the rather significant social costs of being an adolescent whose over riding passion is English usage.® the critical hat is off ta yet another personable section of che Preface, one that Garner encitles “First Principles’: “Before going any further. I should explain my approach, That's an unusual shing for the author of a usage dictionary to do unprecedented, as far asf know. But a guide to pertonal eperience, I can te you thet oni ke poingto be athert marpoatied tad atworst sengely an ly Wedge Could care fess good writing is only as good as the principles on which it’s based, And users should be naturally interested in those principles. So, in the inter- ests of full disclosure... ‘The “unprecedented” and “full disclosure” here are actually good-natured digs at Gamer’ Fowlerite predecessors, and a subele nod to one camp in the wars that have raged in both lexi ography and education ever since the notori- ‘ously liberal Webster's Third New International Dictionary came out in 1961 and included such terms as heighth and irregardless without any monitory labels on them. You can think of Webster's Third as sort of the Fort Sumter of the contemporary Usage Wars These Wars are both che context and the rargee ‘ofa very subtle rhetoricat strategy in A Dictio- nary of Modern American Usage, and without talking abour them i's impossible to explain why Gamers book is both so good and so sneaky. We regular citizens tend to go to The Dic- tionary for authoritative guidance-° Rarely, however, do we ask ourselves who decides what gets in The Dictionary or what words or * spellings or pronunciations get deemed “sub. In ADMAU’s Preface, Garner himself a standard” or “incorrect.” Whence the authori- addesses the Authority Question with a ty of dictionary-makers to decide what's OK™ ‘Trumanesque simplicity and candor that simul- i and what isn't? Nobody elected them, ll. taneously disguise the author's cunning and ‘And simply appealing to precedent or tradi- exemplify it: . tion won't work, because what’ considered cor- ease fect changes over time. In the 1600s, for in- om making judgment [ean imagine that want i seance, the second-singular pronoun took a fea would want me es Lingase don Le ty . singular conjugation-—"You is.” Earlierstilche course, because judgment. involves sub : standard 2-S pronoun wasn’t you but thou. Huge jective tnt sclentift But rhetoric and : numbers of now acceptable words like clever, usage, in the view of most professional write fun, banter, and prestigious entered English as aren't scientific endeavors. You don’t want disp A what usage authorities considered errors or egre Sonate descriptions; you want sound guidance gious slang. And not just usage conventions And that requires judgment. PE but English itself changes over time; if it didn’t, ” we'd all still be talking like Chaucer. Who's to ‘Whole monographs could be written just on the say which changes are natural and which are masterful thetorc of this passage. Note for ex- : corruptions? And when Bryan Garner or ample the ingenious equivocation of judgment in ‘ E, Ward Gilman do infact presume tosay, why “I-don’t shy away from making judgments" vs should we believe them? “And that requires judgment.” Sufice it say that ‘These sorts of questions are not new, but they Garner is at all times keenly aware of the Au- do now have a certain urgency, America is in thority Crisis in modern usage; and his response . the midst of a protracted Crisis of Authority in ‘matters of language. In brief, the same sorts of po- Uitical upheavals thar produced everything from. EZpay Kent State 10 Independent Counsels have pro- duced an influential contra-sNooT school for whom normative standards of English grammar and usage are functions of nothing but custom and superstition and the ovine dacilicy of a populace that lets self-appointed language authorities boss them around. See for example MIT's Steven, Pinker ina famous New Republic article—"Onee introduced, a prescriptive rule is very hard to eradicate, no matter how ridiculous. Inside the writing establishment, the rules survive by the same dynamic thac perpecuaces ritual gen- ital mnutilations”—or, ata somewhat low: erpitch, Bill Bryson in Mother Tongue: Eng- ish and How le Got That Way Who sets down ali chose roles that we allknow about from childhood—the idea thae we must never end a sentence with a peeposition or begin fone with a conjunction, chat we must use each ‘other for ew things and one another for more than two... The answer, surprisingly often, is that no fone dees, char when You look into the Beckground of eese “rules” there is often ltl basis for them. to this crisis isin the best Democrat hetorical So Te There nobetterndiatonof ‘The Diedonanysauhoriy than el shat we ase Seca sete wage BT Bditors Note:The Harpers al prescribes olay 2 What fallow im dhe Praface are he ten ersten pas ht a tcc yam ofverkngen ung prob Tenu, Fre wed on” Ths pein form fthor instil eo thinday Li 17 Thief clever half tr . sre toe invlved to trent topes ngdown the outcome ofahigh- Linguist compare ony on . Suey, bat cup af them re rtnkerbeton the correct rpelling ofthe antijdgment camp ned . Hipnery in the extremeneg.. ofmeringue avagerimadcon i theis abjections vo uangejudg= press in €- Ingenlouny sect ingue wager madeon z ge ju Ao. Acmal Usage: fm the ond; fond vin els op Sepeemher 978, ‘ening vy enor som jut he zettal wrge of cducrted Kisdicienay ie abject.” WD Tn eh tne espect, seal for FE Rely, howled: Miering re Ethical Appe HARPER'S MAC COROLLARY TO THESIS STATEMENT. FOR WHOLE ARTICLE he most salient and timely feature of Gamers book is that it’ both lex: cographical and rhetorical. Its main strategy involves what is known in classical chetoric as the Ethical Appeal. Here the adjective, derived from the Greek ethos doesn't mean guite what we usually mean by cihical. But there are affinities. What the Ethical Appeal amounts to i a complex and sophisticated “Trust me.” its the boldest, most ambitious, and also most distinctively Ameri- can of rhetorical Appeals, because it requites the thetor to convince us not just of his intel- lectual acuity or technical competence but of his basic decency and fnimess and sensitivity to the audience's own hopes and fears. These are not qualities one associates with the traditional sNOOT usage-authority, a figure who pretty much instantiates snobbishness and bow-tied anality, and one whose modern mage is not improved by stuff like American Heritage Dictionary Distinguished Usage Panelist Morris Bishop's "The arrant sole- cisms of the ignoramus are here often omitted centrely, irregardless’ of how he may feel about this neglect” or critic John Simon’s “The English language is being treated nowadays exactly as slave traders once handled their merchandise. ..." Compare those lines’ autho- rial personas with Garner's in, eg., "English usoge is s0 challenging that even e: writers need guidance now and then.” The thrust here is going to be that A Dictimary of Modem American Usage. eatns Gamer pretty much all the trust his. Ethical Appeal asks us for. The book’ “feel-good” spic- it (in the very best sense of feel-good") marties rigor and humility in such a way as to allow Garner to be extremely prescriptive without any appearance of evangelism or elitist put down. This is an extraordinary accomplish ment. Uniderstanding why it's basically a thetor- deal accomplishment, and why this 1s both his- torically significant and (in chi reviewers opi ion) politically redemptive, requires amore detailed look at the Usage Wars. viemand outraged ears from the cot for dheTe nd The New Torker and ge Life, or qa. this from January 6x Adlai "We have DR aC ad ‘nap judgments and the srt af tenited work eect iprore proces impuimsand where sm cbolrship ih spate he geen propped wide snvhvietc beep ou'd sure know lexicography had an underbelly if you read che little introductory essays in modern dic: tionaries—pieces like Webster's DEU's “A Briet History of English Usage” or Webster's Third's “Linguistic Advances and Lexicogtaphy" or AHD-3's “Usage in the American Heritage Dictionary: The Place of Criticism.” Bue almost nobody ever bothers with these litele intros, and it’s not just their shepoine type or the fact thar dictionaries tend to be hard on the lap. Its chat these intros aren't actually written for you or me oF the average citizen who goes to The Dic- tionary just to see how to spell (for instance) meringue. They're written for other lexicogra phers and critics, and in fact they're not real- ly introductory at all but polemical. They're salvos in the Usage Wars thac have been under way ever since editor Philip Gove first sought to apply the value-neueral principles fof structural linguistics 10 lexicography in Webster's Third. Gove's famous response to conservatives who howled# when Webster's Third endorsed OK and de- scribed ain't as “used orally in most parts of the U.S. by many cultivaced speakers [sic]" was this: “A dictionary should have no traffic with .. . artificial notions of correctness of superiority. It should be descriptive and not prescriptive.” These cerms stuck and cured epithetic, and linguistic conservatives are now formally known as Prescriptivists and linguistic liberals as Deseripetvists ‘The former are far better known. When you read the columns of William Safire or Morton Freeman or books like Edwin Newman's Seriely Speaking or John Simon’s Paradigms Lost, you're “actually reading Popular Prescriptivism, a gence sideline of certain jour: nalists (mostly older ones, the vase majority of whom actually do wear bow ties) whose bemused irony often masks a Colonel Blimp’ rage at the way the belaved English of their youth is being trashed in che decadent present. ‘The plutocratie tone and styptic wit of Safire snd Newman and the best of the Pre scriptivists is often modeled after che man. ddarin-Brit personas of Eric Partridge and H. W Fowler, the same Twin Towers af scholarly rennet ipions bn satihat in Crovined ci ‘terme out to bes scandal ed Preseriptivism whom Garner talks about rever- ing asa kid. Descriptiviss, on the other hand, don't have weekly columns in the Times. These guys tend to bbe hard-core academics, mostly linguists or Comp theorists. Loosely organized under che banner of structural (or “descripcive”) linguistics, they are doctrinaire positivists who have their intellec- tual roots in the work of Auguste Comte and Ferdinand de Saussure and their ideological roots firmly in the US. sixties, The brief explicit men- tion Garner's Preface gives this crew— Somewhere along the line, though, usage ditio- nati got hijacked by the descripive linguists who observe language scientifically. For the pure de scripdvist i's impermissible co say that one form of language is any berter than another: as long a native speaker says i, it's OK—and anyone who takes a contrary stand isa dundethead.... sentially, sescripevists and prescriptivists are approaching diferent problems. Desctiprivists want to record language as i's cry used, and they perform a use: ful function—though theit audience is generally Tinted va those willing m pore dhrough vase tomes of dry-asclus esearch —is disingenuous in the extreme, especially the “approaching different problems” part, be- cause it vastly undesplays the Deseriptivists in fluence on U:S. culture. For one thing, Descrip. tivism so quickly and thoroughly teak over English education in this country that just about everybody who started junior high after ¢. 1970 has been taught to write Descriptively—via *freewticing,” “brainstorming,” “journaling,” @ view of writing as sel¥-exploratory and -expresive rather chan as communicative, an abandonment of systematic grammnar, usage, semantics, rhetoric, ‘etymology. For another thing, the very language in which today’s socialist, feminist, minority, gay, and environmentalist movements frame theit sides of political debates is informed by the De- scriptivist belief that traditional English is con- ceived and perpetuated by Privileged WASP Males!” and is thus inherently capitalist sexist, tacist, xenophobic, homophobic, elitist: unfair. ‘Think Ebonics. Think of the involved contortions descenuion of Fowler, Tand, 1938: which oa ‘Ores the near-Himalayon con flearned origin, & the more people undergo to avoid he asa generic pronoun, or ofthe tense deliberate way white males now ad- % just cheie vocabularies around non-wmn's. Think just che names of eS ws. “Reverse Dis- crimination,” Pro-Life” vs. "Pro-Choice," “Un. 7 dercount” vs. “Viote Fraud,’ etc ‘The Descriptivist revolution takes a litle ime ‘co unpack, but irs worth it. The structural lin- guists' rejection of conventional usage rules de- pends on two main arguments, The fest is acad. . emic and methodological. In this age of technology, Deseripcivists contend, it’s the S entific Method—-clinically objective, value. ‘neutral, based on direct observation and demon: . stable hypothesis—that should determine both the content of dictionaries and the standards of “correct” English. Because language is constant: ly evolving, such standards will always be fui. Gove's now classic introduction to Webster's Thind * outlines this type of Descriptivism's five basic edicts: “l——Language changes constantly; 2—Change is normal; 3—Spoken language is the language; 4—Correctness rests upon usages 5—All usage is relative.” These principles look prima facie OK—com- monsensical and couched in the bland simple sev-o, prose of dispassionate Seience—but in De fact they'e vague ard muddled and i takes about three seconds to think of reasonable replies 10 each one of them, vit, 1—OK buchow much andhow § Bhayedlamave, fast! 2—Same thing. Is Hersclitean Ceeeenl flux as normal or desirable as grad : ual change? Do some changes actully serve the language's overall pizare better than others! And how many people have co deviate from . how many conventions before we say the lan- . guage has actually changed? Fifty percent? Ten percent! F 3—This is an old claim, at least as old as Pla- . to's Phaedrus. And its specious I Derrida and * the infamous Deconstructionists have done noth- ing else, they've debunked the idea that speech is language's primary instantiation. Plus consider eae sien dosble ‘cere do) butt tunnel {isa mere token, ofvhich be Ihe infer thevale fromthe contents in which he hers i ‘ed, becnuae ch relates Engst eae desler fil hot ovina en ato which he ater song eis of iigenoe 6 User bushwas As ADMAU's stacly when the Deteriptvins Street inflarceing language in facta true) (Qe. "The Pharmakon” in Derrida La dséminaton be profoundly snalous for Hfdheyarebolatedarhevefor verde or sre (ike malfens you'd probaly beeweroffjuat 7 ote ‘oud~not of- Mr Nichol relatives in the vernscu= Toned) ouside hivtanges Yeung me) 7 Tenney tore, Teese original mean FOLIO the weird arrogance of Gove's (3) wife comectness Only che most mallablike Prescriptivsts care very much about spoken English; most Prescriptive usage guides concem Standard Wricen English.*9 4—Fine, but whose usage? Gove's (4) begs the whole question. What he wants to imply hhete, [ think, is a reversal of che tradicional entailment-relation between abstract rules and concrete usage: Instead of usage ideally comte- sponding to a rigid set of regulations, the regu- lations ought to correspond to the way real peo- ple are actually using the language. Again, fine, but which people? Urban. Latinos? Boston Brahmins? Rural Midwesterners? Appalachian Neogaelics? “French provincial S—Huh? If chis ae wha “sage twin bed with amape ge ee and box spring, S180." sien ite os () apnea SEMI-INTERPOLATION hua note dat Garner’ Prof see plein HARPERS: imply that the correct answer to the above “which people?” is: “All of them!” And ies easy to show why cis will not stand up as a lexicographical principle. The most obvi- ‘ous problem with it is that not everything can. go in The Dictionary. Why not? Because you can’t observe every last bit of every last native speaker's “language hehovion” and even if you could, the resultant dictionary would weigh 4 million pounds and have to be updated hourly.2® The fact is that any lexicographer is going to have to make choices about what gets in and what doesn't. And these choices are based on... what? And now we're right back where we started. It is true that, as a SNOOT, | am probably neu- tologically predisposed to look for flaws in Gove ‘et a's methodological argument. But these flaws seem awfully easy co find. Probably the biggest one is that the Descriptivists’ “scientific lexicography’—under which, keep in mind, the ideal English dictionary is basically number- crunching; you somehow observe every linguis- tic act by every native/naturalized speaker of English and put the sum of all these acts between two! covers and call it The Dic tionary—involves an incredibly stmpliscc and outdated understanding of what scientific means. Te requires a naive belief in scientific objectivi- intended audience as “eters sind editors” And sen ede fr cl ‘he dctlonary in sech eng ‘The New York Review of Books = arebils roundtheogen pn Tike to WRITE... Refer tan" ‘ve, 2woor rer cannot lp ob serving, wife here ay that he pening rin alr eeu ot ADMAUS (AGALINE/ APRIL 2001 ‘be eapitalned ater dependent w ellipaerQuandoque ‘onus dorm 2° Tee somesortof 00 percent tine though i take small Tecialwebmenters anda nach Iaegerarmyaf in sitsacrut-use WHT wll ine the sven. ty, for one thing. Even in the physical sciences, everything from quantum mechanics ta Information Theory has shown that an act of observation is itself part of the phenomenon observed and i analytically inseparable fem it Ifyou remember your old college English clas 5, there's an analogy here that points up the trouble scholars ge into when they confuse ob- servation with interpretation. Recall the New Critics. They believed that literary criticism wwas best conceived as a “scientific” endeavor ‘The critic was a neutral, careful, unbiased, high- Jy trained observer whose job was to find and ob- jectively describe meanings that were right there—titerally inside—picces of licerature. Whether you know what happened to the New CCiticism’s reputation depends on whether you took college English after c. 1975; suffice it to say that its star has dimmed. The New Critics had the same basic problem as Gove's Methodologi- cal Descriptivists: They believed that scientific ‘neant the same thing as neutral or unbiased. And that linguistic meanings could exist “objective- 1." separate from any interpretive act «The point ofthe analogy is that claims to ob- jectivity in language study are now the stuff of jokes andl shudders. The epistemological assump- tions that underlie Methodological Descriptivism have been thoroughly debunked and displaced— in Litby the rise of poststructuralsm, Reader-Re- sponse Criticism, and Jaussian Reception Theo- 1¥ in Hinguistics bythe rise of Pragmatics and is now pretty much universally accepted that (a) ‘meaning is inseparable from some act of inter- pretation and (b) an act of interpretation is always somenhat biased, i. informe by the interpreters particular ideology. Aral the consequence of (a) and {b) is thar there’ ro way around it—decisions aboot what ro put in The Dictionary and what to ‘exclude are going to be based on a lexicographer’s ideology. And every lexicographer’s got one. To presume thar dictionary-making can somehow avoid or transcend ideology is simply to subscribe to a particular ideology, ane that might aptly be calle Unbelievably Naive Positivism ‘There's an even more important way Deserip- tivists are wrong in thinking that che Scientific Method! is appropriate to the study of language FTomerus) sod Winans & Beardsley and he Te Clone rendng” school thet acne nary eis rom Even if, as a thought experiment, we assume a kind of nineteenth century scientific realism—in which, even though some scientists interpreta tions of natural phentamena might be biased #* the natural phenomena themselves can be supposed to-exist wholly independent of either observation. br interpretation—no such realist supposition can be made about “language behavior,” because this behavior is both human and fundamentally normative, To understand this, you have only to faccept the proposition that language is by its very “nature public—ie., that there ean be no such thing asa Private Language’®—and then to ob serve the way Methodological Descriptiviats seem either ignorant ofthis factor oblivious to its con sequences, a in for example one Charles Fies’s introduction to an epigone of Webster's Third called The American College Dictionary: {A dictionary can be an “authority” only in the sease in which a book of chemistry or of physics or of Totany can bean “authoriy’—by the sccuracy and the completenes of its record of te observed facts ‘ofthe field examined, in accord withthe latest prin Ciples and techniques ofthe particular sience. ‘This isso stupid it practically drools. An “aw- thoritative” physics text presents the results of physiciss? observacions and physicists’ theories bout those observations Ifa physics cextbook op- ecated on Deseriptivise principles, the fact chat Some Americans believe that electricity flows better downhill (based on the observed fact that power lines tend to run high above the homes they serve) would require the Electricity Flows Better Downhill Theory to be included as a vvaltd” theory in the textbook—just as, for Dr. Fries, if some Americans use infer for imply, the tse becomes an ipso facta “valid” part of the lan- fuage. Seructucal linguists like Gove and Fries fre not, finally, scientists but census-takers who happen to misconstrue the importance of “ob served facts.” It isn scientific phenomena they're tabulating but rather a set of human behaviors, anda lot of human behaviors are—to be blunt — moronic. Tey, for instance, ro imagine ant “au thoritative” ethies textbook whose principles were based on what most people actually do. ‘Nom-wise, le’s keep in mind that language didn’t come into being because our hairy ances tors were sitting around che velde with nothing better to do. Language was invented to serve cer- tain specific purposes:#4 "Thar mushroom is poi~ ese two rocks together and you can stare a fire”; “This shelter is mine’ 50 on. Cleatly, as linguistic communities evolve ver time, they discover thar some ways of using language are “better” than others—meaning bet ter with respect to che comununity’s purposes. IF ‘we assume that one such purpose might be com- rmunicating which kinds of food are safe to eat, then you can see how, for example, a misplaced modifier might violate an important norm: 28 Crmoenes oF caxoen Lc reseascuens) Tine of thinking i ‘rated below, snd sthough the de enon extremely per ei aay a you eam ste rom the sie of hi FN, engi nd invelred and eke ‘Tones cha apni ow dp {iy be Soter of simply grant Ing the th of de propeiton sn forging om wid he main te inteprorative pewansTRarion OF 16 NO SUCH THING 43 A PRIVATE LANGUAOE Te semetirae tempting imagine hat cere cot ouch thingace Prhate Langage Ma tf cr are prove to ly-pl Th trem the fact that ‘hem oy knee ets oly T can ect ie tempting concede Chat forme ever pain awa reny suhjctive internal meaning thet GnlTeamtulyundertands This lk the tdelescent potrmabese error er Iheseroa he colar gees wd what ther peple cle calor green” ‘hy in fat note he seme col resperence tall The et that beth he and someone else call Pele Bens fnew green snd { woplight' co igual greens? Penrepunranen ony hathere flr constr im tele (olor perience of fren and te ot he whole ine af think ra ened wd exhanting nce eps endo up slumped "Fhe pinshere shat heen fs Private Language, lke rie {ae Calors and mont of the th Tetelipsatievoncewith hich ‘Misparialar sevievebaeatae™ Jour ner een aed both ‘Rladed and demonstrably Tm the cave of Priate Lam page, the delusion io wavally ited om the Belief hats word such a pain hes dhe meaning it tected” ta eling in my knee ‘Botae Me f- Wiagennei's Philo sepicalTaventigatons promi ‘he ogo, worda ncaa hare the ineening they de becan ofer= {lin rules and verifeadion coe Uintareimpoved ont from out Side our owt eabjectitin by ‘he community msbich have {ergot long ned communicate ih ther people. Wiegenstin® Urpeenens whichis sdmitely ermpler und qromic a agreed i ae ade ring dat al dis sexta ot onan ao Prt {yrvelevanc tothe Usage Wa anything ou have any tenatin sally tmlasken, ord mea pendomtanapersnal ral ne, thee mle om communi ee ‘ping inset onl co “psy nem Prnte basal ie Teducibly publi political, and ‘dele Tens ner thon grommar and wage ares Sally bowad ap with ver Tost, ‘cial ue that llesniel Asser a about-clan, ace, gender. lain purpovs. They ce noe law War theyre not Iiee-aiee ei nthe ther wt “People who cat that kind of mushroom often get sick” confuses the recipient about whether he'll act sick only if he eats the mushroom fre- quently or whether he stands a good chance of getting sick the very fist time he eats it fa oth- er words, the community hasa vested practical ine terest in excluding this kind of misplaced modi- fer from acceprable usage; and even ia certain percencaye of tribesmen screw up anc! use them, this sill doesn’t make m.m.' a good idea. Maybe now the analogy between usage ‘and cthics is clearer. Just because people sometimnes fie, cheat on their axes, or scream at theie kids, this doesn’t mean, thac they think those things are “good.” The whole poinc of norms isto help us evaluate our actions (including uter- ances) according to what we as a com munity have decides our real interests and purposes are. Granted, chis analysis is oversimplified: in practice i’ incred ibly hard co arrive at norms and to keep them at least minimally fair or sometimes even to agree on wha they ae (qv. today’ Caleure Wars) But the Descriptivists assumption that all usage norms are arbitrary and dispensable leads to— well, have a mushroom, The connotations of arbitrary here are tricky, though, and this sore of segues into the second ar- sgument Descriptivsts make. There isa sense in which specific linguistic conventions are arbi- trary, For instance, there’ no particular meta- physical reason why our word for a fourlegged ‘amma shat gives mill and goes Moo is cow and not, sa, pr. The uptow pace for this is “the arbitrariness ofthe linguistic sign,” and i used, along with cerrain principles of cognitive science and generative grammar, ina more philosophically sophisticated version of Descriptivism that hotds the conventions of SWE to be more like the niceties of fashion than like actual norms. This "Philosophical Descriptiviso” doesn’t care much ‘MENS ROOM ‘nobody who isn’t damaged in some profound Ol er Socksish way accually ever makes these sors of very deep syntactic erors®5 and you get the basic propesicion of Noam Chomsky’s generative lin aulstics, which is thar there exists a Universal Grammar beneath andl common to all languages, plus that there is probably an actual part of the hu- tan brain chars imprinted with this Universal Graramar che same way beds brains are ieprint ed with Fly South and dogs’ with Sniff Genitals There's all kinds of compelling evidence and sup: port for these ideas, not least of which ate the advances that linguists and cogni- tive scientists and ALL researchers have been able co make with them, and the theories havea loc of credibility and they ate adduced by the Philosophical De scriptivists to show that since the realy importa rules of language are at birth al- ready hardwired into peoples neocortex, SWE prescriptions against dangling par- ticiples or mised mezaphors are basical- ly the linguistic equivalent of whalebone corsess and shore forks for salad. As Descriptivise Steven Pinker putsit, "When a scientist considers all the high-tech mental machinery needed t0 order words into everyday sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential decorations.” This argument is not the barrel of drugged ‘rout that Methodological Descriprivism was, but its still ulnerable to some objections. The fist cone is easy. Even if t's true that we'e all wied with a Universal Grammar, i simply doesn’t fl- tow that all prescriptive rules are supertious. ‘Some of these nules really do seem to serve clare ity and precision, The injunction against tvo- way adverbs “People who eat this often get sick”) is an obvious example, as are rules about other kinds of misplaced modifers (“There ate many reasons why lawyer lie, some better than others”) and about relative pronouns’ proximity to the nouns they modify ('She’ the mother of an in- ar about dictionaries or method its target is the fant daughter who works twelve hours a day") we stondand sNCOT claim supra—that prescriptive Granted, the Philosophical Desceipcivise can : ee rules have their ultimate justifcation inthe com- question just how absolutely necescary these rules - rmunity’s need to make its language meaningful. are—it’ quite likely thata recipient of clauses ike ee The argument goes like this. An English sen- the above could figure out what the sentences nos tence’s being meanings noc thesame asitsbe- mean from the sentences on either side or from hee ing grammatical, That is, such clearly itl-formed the “overall context” or whatever. listener can constructions as “Did you seen the car keys of me?” or “The show was looked by many people” are nevertheless comprehensible; the sentences do, mote of les, communicate the information they're trying to ger across. Add to this the face that usualy figure our what {relly mean wher I mis- use infer for imply or say indicate for se, too. Bat many of these solecisms require at least 3 couple lextin nanoseconul of cognitive effort, a kind of rapid sift-andaliscaed process, before the recipi- f eee (1994), Steen Pinker putea wap "Ne one, met even «valley Fit, hae Co be told net tay Binks The Language Faainet How the Mind Grete Language 277+ 48 HARPER macazeE APRIL 200. ‘ent gets it, Extra work. It’s debatable just how much extra work, bur it seems indisputable that wwe patsome extra ncural burden on the recipient ‘when we fail follow certain conventions, Wiet confusing clauses like ehe above, ie simply seems ‘more “considerate” to follow the rules of correct SWE. ..just as it's more “considerate” to de-slob your home before entertaining guests orto brush your teeth before picking up a date. Not just more considerate bu more rspecful somehow— ‘both of your listener and of what you're trying to get actoss. As we sometimes also say about ele- ments of fashion and etiquette, the way you use English “Makes a Statement” or "Sends a Mes- sage"—even though these Statements/Messages often have nothing ro do with the actual infor: mation you'ee trying to transmit. We've now sort of bled into @ more serious te- joinder to Philosophical Descriptivism: From the fact that linguistic communication is nor stict- ly dependent on usage and grammar it does not necessarily follow that the traditional rules of usage and grammar are nothing but “ineonse- uential decorations.” Anocher way to state the objector is that just because something is “dec- orative” does not necessarily make it “inconse- quential.” Rhetoricaly, Pinker's ip dismissal is ‘bd tactics, fort invites the very question it begs: inconsequential ro whom? Take, forexample, the Descripevist claim that so-called correct English usages such as brought rather than breng and fel rather than feled are ar- bitrary and restrictive and unfair and are sup ported only by custom and are (like irregular verbs in general) archaic and incommodious and an all-around pain in the ass Let us concede for the momen that these cbjections are 100 percent reasonable, Then fer’ talk about pants. Trousers, slacks. I suggest to you that having the “ subthoracie clothing for U.S. males be pants in- stead of skitts is arbitrary {loss of other cultures lec men wear skirts), restrictive and unfair (U.S, females get to wear pants), based solely on archaic custom (I chink i's gor something to do with certsin traditions about gender and leg postion, the same reasons girls’ bikes don’t have a cross bot), and in certain ways not only imcommodious but illogical (skiets are more comfortable than pants; pants ride up: pants are hor; pants can squish the genitalsand reduce fertility; overtime pants chae and erode iresulae sections of men’s legit and give ober men hideous hal-denud- elegs, ete, ee). Let us grant—a thought ex periment if nothing ele=that these areal eae sonable and compelling abjeccions to pants as an androsartoréal norm. Let usin ft th OuF minds and hearts say yes—shout yes—to the Bkiet the kil che co the satong, the jupe. $8% GO dagal Letus dream of even in que spare time work toward an Ametica where nobody lays any arbitrary sumptuary prescrip sions on anyone else and we can all go around at comfortable and aerated and unchafed and un Sauished and motile aswe wane ‘And yet the fat remains tha, nthe broad cu ‘ural mainsteam of millet America, men do Dot wear skirts. I you, the reader area US. mae, and even ifyou share my personal objections to pats and dreams do of ool and gently un Squishy American Tomorrow; the odds are sil 98.9 percent that in 100 percent of public situa tions you wear pant/slackshores/tunks. More tothe poin, fou srea US, male andalo have US. male child, and if tha chil ere vo come fo you one evening and announce his desive/in- tention eo wear ask rther than pants to school the next day, Lam TOO-percene confident that you are going to discourage him from doing so Sronaly discourage him. You could be a Molotov tosing ant-pants radical ora kilt manufacturer or Steven Pinker himself you're going to stand ‘over your kid and be prescriptive about an asbi- trary archaie uncomfortable, and inconsequen- tilly decorative piece of lthing. Why? Well, be cause in modern Ameticn any litle boy who comes school in ace (even, say, a modest alle seaton mi going to et stared at and shunted and beaten up and called a Total Geekoid by a whole lat of peaple whose approval and accep tance ae important to him. Inoue culture, 'n ther words a boy who wears ski is Making a Statement thats going to have all kind of gree some social and emotional consequences. You se where thisis ong in gina co describe the intended point ofthe pant analogy in exms Imaaue are simplistic—doutless there ate whole books sn Pragmatics or pyeholingusties or some: ‘hing devored ro unpacking this point. The weld thing is that I've sen neither Descriptive oe sNoOTS deploy tin the Wars? Wave alt interest 36 tn heat of Stee Pinker] ‘hate people are the boys peers pd ethers and roan gases, te Inthe vane of suet Aeeersand drag qutens vhs he jobs in the Straighs World and ear pants to dhose jobs co- etre and cliente td people Sn the vubvey For he dechard cha nevertbeler wears cnt fed eile te work, ‘lines “the wrong menage” But ‘fecoure ral baally ce sane thing 77 tates de onlysimeaone wer Iars the ioe made solic Sinrtio ada frtapethapromine s2 improve peopl’ wonbalay ‘There ade are tremely mina tnd intimidating and slenye star out with "BID YOU &xO™ Feorussuo0e You my THe WORDS eu » When {say or write something, there ae ac tually a whole lot of different things am com- municating. The propositional content (the ac- ‘tual information f'm trying to convey) is only de part of i. Another pore i st about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this 1s a function of the fact that there are uncountably many well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, fom eng." was attacked by a beat!” to “Goddamn bea tried tll me!” to "That using juggernaut bethought to sup upon my person!” fnd so on, And diferent levels of diction and formality are only the simplest kinds of distine- tion; things get way more com. plicated in the sorts of interper- sonal communication where social relations and feelings and toods come into pay. Here's a familar sr of ex ample. Suppose tht you and {are acquaintances and we're in my apartment having a conversation and that at some point | wnt t0 terminate che UT e regarded as a peer, a member of somebody else's collective or commanity or Group. Another way to come at this is t0 acknowledge something that in the Usage Wars ets mentioned only in very abstract terms: “Correct” English usage is, as practical matte, a function of whom you're talking to and how you wane that person to re spond—not just ¢o your utterance but also to 704 In other words, a large part of the agenda of any communication is rhetorical and depends fon what some rhet-scholars call “Audience” ot “Discourse Community.”29 And the United States obviously has a huge number of such Dis- course Communities, many of them regional andjor cultural di- alects of English: Black English, Latino English, Rural Southern, Urban Southern, Standard Upper-Midwest, Maine Yankee, East-Texas Bayou, Boston Blue- Collar, on and on. Everybody knows this. What not everyone knows—especially not certain Pre- scriptivists—is that many of these non-SWE Ce conversation and not have you be in my apart- ne ment anymore. Very delicate social moment. dialects have their own highly developed and Think of all the diferent ways Ican try tohan- internally consistent grammars, and that sore of be die t:“Wovr, look at the time"; “Could we finish these dialects usage norms actualy make more ie this up later”; "Could you please leave now"; linguistieaestheric sense chan do their Standard "Go": "Ger out”; "Ger the hell out of here”; counterparts (see INTERPOLATION). Plus, of course, “ “Didn't you say youhad to be someplace”; Time there are innumerable sub- and subsubdialects for you to hit the dusty trail, my friend”; “Of ~ based on all sors of things chac have nothing co you go then, love"; or that slyold telephone-con- do with locale or ethnicity—Medical-School versation ender: “Well, I'm going to let you go English, Peorians-Who-Follow-Pro-Wrestling- n now"; etc And then chink ofall thedifferentfac- Closely English, Twelve-Year-Old-Males-Whose- a torsand implications of each option. Worldview-Is-Deeply-Informed-By-Soush-Park ‘The point here is obvious. rconcerns aphe- _English—and that are nearly incomprehensible : ‘nomenon that SNOOT blindly reinforceand that __t© anyone who isn’t inside theit very tight and : Descriptivists badly underestimate and thacscary __ specific Discourse Community (which of course ae vocabetape ads ery co exploit. People really do. 4s pat of thei function’). es “judge” one another according to their use of : language. Constantly. Of course, people judge INTERPOLATION “ ‘one another on the basis ofall Kinds of chings— __—_—&XAMPLE OF GRAMMATICAL ADVANTAGES OF A ‘ weight, scent, physiognomy, occupation, make of NON-STANDARD DIALECT THAT THIS AEVIEWER vehicle#*—and, again, doubles it’ al terribly ACTUALLY KNOWS ABOUT FIRSTHAND complicated and occupies whole battalions of sociolinguists. Bue it’s clear chat at feast one his rev. happens to have so native smponent of all this interpersonal semantic English dlialects—the SWE of my i: judging involves acceptance, meaning not some hypereducated parents and the hard- touchy-feely emotional afirmacion but aceual earned Rural Midwestern of most of we acceptance ot rejection of somebody’ bid tobe my peers. When I'm talking to R.M.5, | usually csptures something fey 30 (Pius is true that whether a pee ato ention clo, gen diver vce h20 soeaething ets called « nub Steptoe alah crt lee PSAs all ens going ee act" on Sungen” sxme to d= eo “CThe above ta an abvious _prndon how much annoy peo =I attempt co preempt cvaderly ple outside. ity Dincowese e Diszourne Commontya an incerivincesttheterm's ton Cammuniy Carnorhimuatios “pel eon feoe he Sores : ceample of ‘nueddeplopmentin hina.) uiniemaye 99 a/BLINESE, COW” ane hme amd spaced scene emi frpo thas ocala PUTERESE, LECALESE, and 42 ioallyo conceal meaning fom A thle addltien te SWE beanuse i BEAUCRATESE,andhe moreor lest he untnisated.”) we2 Te) 50 HARPERS MAGAZINE AnRIL 201 use, for example, the construction “Where's it a” instead of “Where is ie?” Part of this is a naked desire to icin and nor get rejected as an egghead or fag (see sub). But another part is that |, sNoOT or no, believe that this and other R.M.sms-are in cereain ways superior to cheit Standard equivalents, Fora dogmatic Presceiptivist, “Where itat”” is double-damned as a sentence that not only ends with a preposiion but whose final preposi- tion forms a redundancy with where chat’ simi- lar to che redundancy in “the reason is because” (which latter usage I'll admit makes me dig my rails into my palms). Rejoinder First off, the avoideterminal-prepositions rule is the inven tion of one Fr. R. Lowth, an eighteenth-centu- ty British preacher and indurate pedant who did things lke spend scores of payes arguing for hath over the trendy and degenerate has. The a-t-p. rule is antiquated and stupid and only the most ayatolloid SNOT takes it seriously, Garner him self calls the rule “stuffy” and lists all kinds of useful constructions like "the man you were lis- tening t0" that we'd have to discard or distoe if wwe really enforced it Plus the apparent redundancy of “Where's it at?" is offeet by its metrical logic. What the at really does is license the contraction of & after the incerrogative adverb. You can’t say "Where's it?” So the choice is between “Where is it?” and “Where's iat”, and the latter, a strong anapest, is prettior and trips off the tongue better than “Where is it?”, whose meter is either a clunky monosyllabic-foot + trochee or its nothing ac all This is probably the place for your SNOOT reviewer openly to concede that a certain num ber of traditional prescriptive rules really are stu- pid and that people who insist on them (like the legendary assistant to PM. Mangaret Thatcher who refused to read any memo with a split infinitive in it, oF the j-high teacher I had who automatically graded you down if you stated a sentence with Hopeful) are that very most pathetic and dangerous sort of SNOOT, the sxoOT Who ls Wrong. The injunction against split infinitives for instance, isa consequence of the weird fact that English grammar is modeled Chinese, anal. is lguage an in ‘ecsionste dictate tan here” se angunge wearer onder Eatin, Germany and Bum 34 bas note hate’ fan are thetic) English and 33 (Qy Foremnple Sir Thoms Smithccomervtheing De Rect tet Emendatn Linguse Angli- ‘ae Seriptione Dialogs 1568) 1k. Sooe ali infiniivesvealy tre clanly and hard w parse, fon Latin even though Latin is a synthetic lan guage and English is an analytic language.3? atin infinitives consist of one word and are impossible to as it were split, and the earliest English Prescriptivists—so ‘enthralled with Latin that their English usage guides were actually writen in Latins decided that English —infinitives shouldn't be split either. Gamer himself takes cout after the si. rule in both SPLiT INRNITIVES and SUPERSTITIONS.5¢ And Hopefully at the beginning of a sentence, as a certain cheeky eighth-grader once pointed out to his everlast- ing social cost, actualy functions not as a: mis- placed modal auxiliory o as a manner adverb like quickly or angrily but as a “sentence adverb” that indicates the speakers arctude about the state of affairs described by the sentence (exam- ples of perfectly OK sentence adverbs are Cleary, Basically, Luckily}, and only sNOOTS edu- cated in the high-pedantic years up to 1960 blindly proscribe itor grade it down, ‘The cases of split infinitives and Hopefully are in fact often trotted out by dogmatic Descrip- tivists as evidence that all SWE usage rules are arbitrary and stupid (which isa bie like pointing to Pat Buchanan as evidence that all Repub- licans are maniacs}. Gamer rejects Hopeflly's knee-jerk proscription, too, albeit grudgingly, including the adverb in his miniessay on SKUNKED TERMS, which is his phrase for a usage that is “hotly disputed ... any use of it is likely to distract some readers.” (Gamer also points ut something Id never quite realized, which is that hopefully, if misplaced/mispunctuated in the body of a sentence, can create some of the same owo-way ambiguities as other adver in the clause “l will borrow your book and hope- fally read it soon.”) ether we're conscious of it ot not, most of us are fluent in more than one major English dialece and in a large number of subdi- sects and are probably at least passable in countless athers. Which dialect you choose to specially when there arcane Inch of vords between to and Severe aug to Iand to the best of our ably ‘respond ta these henge Cerner eas “vide mig" and sob discourages Hie eeral Jerdict om crewich tres perfec proper” and some lly and yom jun totaly ‘ed neve, and thet ne one wide then incorporates the rent2own tidy dogmati wae cin handle ‘Mla cnen and hha Ingeiea woplitaninfndtiese> qlrtagood sand ween = apoed mample ofthe way Garner distogalshes sound end helpful Descriptive abjectionsirem svchost objeriane and rod ob fectonsintosmmerterand more @ € a Cum-N-Go Quik Mart use depends, of course, on whom you're ‘addressing. More to the point submit that the dialect you use depends mostly on what sort of Group your listener i part of and whether you wish fo present yourself asa fellow member of that Group. An obvious example is that tradi. ‘tonal upger-class English has certain dialectal difierences from lower-class English and chat schools used to have courses in Elocution whose whole point was to teach people how t0 speak in an upper-class way. But usage-a5-incl- sion is about much more than class. Here’ another though¢ experiment: A bunch of U'S. teenagers in clothes that look far too lange for them are sitting together in the local malls Food Court, and a S3-yearold man with a combover and clothes that fit comes over to them and says that he was scoping them and thinks they're cotally rad and/or phat and is it cool if he just kicks it and does the hang here with chem. The kids’ reaction is going to be tether scorn oF embarrassment for the guy— most likely a mix of both. Q: Why! Or imagine that two hard-core urban Black guys are stand- ing there talking and [, who am resoundingly and in all ways white, come up and greet them swith "Yo" and call them “Brothers” and ask “Sup, s'goin on," pronouncing on with that NYCish 65-2 diphthong thae Young Urban Black English deploys for a standard 6. Either chese guys are going to be offended or they are going to chink Lam simply out of ty mind. No other reaction is remotely foreseeable. Q: Why? ‘Why: A dialect of English is teamed! and used either because its your native vernacular ot because its the dialect of a Group by which you wish (with some degree of plausibility) to be accepted. And although i is the major and arguably the most important one, SWE is only ne dialect. And ic is never, or a least hardly fever, anybody’s only dialect. This is because there are—as you and I both know and yet no tone in the Usage Wars ever seems to mention— situations in which faultlessly comrect SWE is clearly not the appropriate dialect. ‘Childhood is ful of such situations. This is one reason why sNCOTlets tend to havea very hard so- shout Usani'Themyandsbouthor elpe the Mi seehow to startso membership in Ur ave cial rimeof itin school. A sNoorlet isa lee kid ‘who's wildly, precociously fluent in SWE (he is of- ten, recall, the offspring of SNOOTS). Just about every class has a SNOOTIer, 0 | know you've seen themt—these are the sorts of six: to twelve-year- ‘olds who use whom correctly and whose response to striking out in -ball isto cry out “How sncal- culably dreaclfult” erc. The elementary-school swooTlet is one ofthe earliest identifiable species ‘of academic Geekoid and is duly despised by his peers and praised by his teachers. These teachers ‘sually don’t see the incredible amounts of pun- ishment the sNCOTIet is receiving from his clas- mates, or if they do se it they blame the classmates and shake their heads sadly atthe vicious and ar- bitrary cruelty of which children ate capable. But the other children’s punishment of che swoorlet is not arbitrary at all. There, are important chings at stake. Little kids in school are learning about Group-inclusion and -exclu- Sion and about the respective rewards and penalties of same and about the use of dialect fand syntax and slang as signals of affinity and inclusion.3 They'ee leaming about Discourse Communities. Kids lean this stuff not in. English or Social Studies but on the play- ground and at lunch and on the bus. When his peers are giving the sNooTlet monstrous Quadruple Wedgies or holding him down and taking cums spitcing on him, there's serious Tearning going on ...for everyone except the little sSOOT, who in fact is being punished for precisely his failure to learn. What neither he nor his teacher realizes is that the sNooTet is deficient in Language Ars, He has only one dialect. He cannot alter his vocabulary, usage, or grammar, cannot use slang or vulgarity; and its these abilities that are really required for “peer rapport,” which Is just_a fancy Elementary-Ed term for being accepted by the rmost important Group in the litle kid’ life. This reviewer acknowledges that there seems to be some, uram, personal stuff getting dredged up and worked out here; but the stuff is relevant. The point is that the little A+ sooTlet is actually in the same dialectal posi- tion as the class's “slow” kid who cant learn co stop using aint or bringed. One is punished én class, the other on the playground, but both fare deficient in the same linguistic skill vis

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