--- Steve Brust <skzb at dreamcafe.com> wrote: > > > I'd never in a million years have identified Mark as a prescriptivist. > One judges the changes according to whether, in one's opinion, they make > the language more flexible, elegant, and capable of making fine > distinctions. If there is a change that is coming into vogue that one > doesn't care for, one avoids that usage, and perhaps even argues against > it. This is almost always a losing battle, but generally worth fighting > anyway. In that dimension I have a split personality (schizoid-- figuratively, not clinically -- not schizophrenic), between my descriptivist training and prescriptivist leanings. I try to keep these two halves from strangling each other :-), partly by personifying the prescriptivist as Dr. Whom. But I am continually (not continuously) reading with an imaginary or real pen or pencil in hand, marking up the text and putting comments or corrections in the margins. I am a descriptivist in that I'm interested in and attentive to the way people speak and write, and I consider new forms and changes to be worthy of linguistic attention, as well as often been valuable in the life of the language and the society. I am a prescriptivist in that I firmly believe that some usages, definitions, spellings, and so on are superior to others, either absolutely ("millennium": two L's, two N's*) or in terms of a particular meaning[1], register[2], etc. 1. I remember a time when two close friends of mine had a virulent falling-out and spoke to me separately about it. I listened sympathetically to both, and to each one I explained that I was very fond of them both and could not take sides in their dispute, but I would, if they liked, suggest a way in which they might deal with some of the consequences of their disagreement. I cared for both of them, so I certainly was not UNINTERESTED in their dispute, but I was able to be a DISINTERESTED adviser. 2. Literally while I was dictating** the preceding paragraph, my wife passed through the room and paused to tell me of an entertaining interview with the actor Will Smith that she had heard on Fresh Air. His mother and grandmother, one a teacher and the other also a school system employee, had been quite strict about his use of English, e.g., grounding him for the afternoon when he said "y'all" instead of "you": he was not to speak like the kids on the street! And, he went on to explain, while he resented it at the time, he very much appreciated it as he grew up. "If you're going to talk to the big moguls in Hollywood or other corporations and be taken seriously, they have to see you as someone who knows his business, someone to respect. When you're hanging out with your friends, the guys on the block, they have to be able to see you as one of the guys. Any African-American, to succeed, has to be able to speak both languages." [My summary of my wife's paraphrase.] Similarly, a number of years ago my daughter asked me why I took on a "guy accent" when talking with a garage mechanic or grocery clerk, talking differently from the way I usually do with my family and friends and coworkers. I explained, "Language does many things. It doesn't just convey semantic information. Language can say 'I am better than you. I am worse than you. We have something in common. We have nothing in common. We belong to the same group.'" > In any case, the distinction between descriptivist and prescriptivist is > quite real: compare a Webster's dictionary to an American Heritage > dictionary. Any dictionary can call itself "Webster's" -- that's not a trademark. But maybe you mean Merriam-Webster. -- Mark **[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.] * Millennium: The Dictionary Entry to the tune of Jingle Bells (chorus) Mark A. Mandel Copr. 2004 Double-L, double-N, just ten letters long. That's how to spell "millennium", remember by this song. "One thousand years exactly", the meaning of the word: Year One began the first one, and 2001 the third. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo