<div dir="ltr"><h1>In ‘Bad English,’ language scholar Ammon Shea sticks it to the sticklers</h1> <div class=""> <ul class=""><li class=""><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/in-bad-english-language-scholar-ammon-shea-sticks-it-to-the-sticklers/2014/06/10/2560e12a-eff3-11e3-9ebc-2ee6f81ed217_story.html#"><span class=""></span></a><br>
</li><li class=""><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/in-bad-english-language-scholar-ammon-shea-sticks-it-to-the-sticklers/2014/06/10/2560e12a-eff3-11e3-9ebc-2ee6f81ed217_story.html#"><span class=""></span></a><br>
</li></ul> </div> <div class=""> <img class="" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/06/10/BookWorld/Images/BadEnglish.JPG?uuid=tEkLBPDHEeO_dkR6XfZBHw"><br> <span class="">“Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation,” by Ammon Shea. (Perigee)</span> </div>
<div class=""> <span class="">By Bill Walsh</span> <span class="">June 10</span> <span class=""><span class=""></span> </span> </div> <p>In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399165576?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0399165576&linkCode=xm2&tag=thewaspos09-20">“Bad English,”</a>
Ammon Shea wastes no time challenging widely held beliefs about just
what English is bad. His subtitle, “A History of Linguistic
Aggravation,” gets in an opening jab at sticklers like me, who know that
“irritate” means annoy while “aggravate” means “make worse.”</p> <p>Shea, having read the OED to write <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002PJ4LEU?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B002PJ4LEU&linkCode=xm2&tag=thewaspos09-20">“Reading the OED,”</a>
is well qualified to tell us we probably don’t know as much as we think
we do. He traces the origins of the competing definitions of
“aggravate” and finds that the 16th-century birth of the
stickler-approved meaning barely edges out the 16th-century birth of the
frowned-upon usage. And don’t bother reaching for the original
meanings: To aggravate is to weigh something down; to irritate is “to
rouse or provoke a person to action.”</p> <p>That’s just one of many
examples Shea uses to demonstrate that words “know how to chew gum and
walk at the same time.” In detailed case studies and in quick hits, he
covers the usual suspects and some surprises. If you pay attention to
this sort of thing, you probably know about the controversies
surrounding “hopefully,” “literally,” “disinterested,” “decimate,”
“enormity,” “unique,” “irregardless,” “normalcy,” “impact” and
“different than.” You may have been warned to avoid the passive voice,
and not to split infinitives or begin sentences with conjunctions or end
them with prepositions.</p> <p>But did you know that in the eyes of
sticklers not so long past, you couldn’t be “very pleased”? Or
“balding”? That you couldn’t “belittle” somebody or “donate” to charity
or send a “package”? And heaven forbid you refer to a limb as a “leg.”
These relics from Shea’s museum of language peevery find “Bad English”
at its most interesting.</p> <p>Shea also deftly picks apart the six
rules of writing that George Orwell proposed in “Politics and the
English Language,” acknowledging the novelist’s greatness but noting
that he “breaks his own rules far more frequently than most language
scolds do, often disregarding his advice in the very same sentence in
which he offers it.”</p> <p>Shea is not as successful in
answering the obvious question “Okay, so what do we do with this
information?” It’s true that language changes, and that it’s not a good
idea to be a smug jerk in enforcing a status quo that wasn’t the status
quo 50 years ago and won’t be 50 years from now, but what does this mean
for how we should write right now?</p> <p>A smart passage that could be
read as a thesis is buried in an entry on whether “fun” can be an
adjective as well as a noun: “You can use <i>funner </i>and <i>funnest</i>,
but you should bear in mind that anyone who chastises you for this use
is unlikely to be interested in hearing your explanation for why it
should be acceptable. These words will grate on the ears of many for
some while to come. The process of an acceptable usage becoming
unacceptable can be a long one, and the reverse process is true as well.
Just because you <i>can </i>do something does not mean that you <i>should</i>.”</p> <p>But then, in a qualified compliment to usage expert Bryan A. Garner and his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195382757?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0195382757&linkCode=xm2&tag=thewaspos09-20">“Garner’s Modern American Usage,”</a>
Shea distances himself from the “should” part: “While I reject his
premise (prescribing how people should and should not use their
language), I must admit that he presents it uncommonly well.”</p> <p>With a different parenthetical, I could say the same thing about Shea’s book.</p> <p class=""> </p><p class="" id="U8001313179184pOC">Walsh, a copy editor at The Washington Post, is the author of three books on English usage, most recently <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250006635?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1250006635&linkCode=xm2&tag=thewaspos09-20">“Yes, I Could Care Less.”</a> </p>
<p class="">BAD ENGLISH</p> <p>A History of Linguistic Aggravation</p> <p>By Ammon Shea</p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>
Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br>
<a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------
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