prescriptivism, conventions, irony, and could(n't) care less

[Herb Stahlke]

Lynne,

Just before the Christmas break, the ATEG list had a longish
discussion of prescriptivism.  These are largely college and high
school grammar teachers, many of them linguistically trained and
aware of the issues.  A point widely held among them is that,
while it's very important for students to master prescriptive
rules and write accordingly, the rules themselves should be
recognized as the social norms they are, rather like table manners
and dress codes.  My students respond well to this analogy.  It
allows us to talk about the rules and see where they don't make
sense linguistically at the same time as we are observing language
use at multiple social levels and in different dialect contexts.
Students tend to be pretty bright about this.  The hard part is
getting them to see the relevance of in-depth study of the
structure of English.

As to "Ya done good," there is a long history in English of
adjectives and adverbs having the same form.  This is clearly true
today of "fast"

Don't walk so fast.

where "fastly" doesn't even exist, but it's also true of "slow".
The difference is that prescriptivists will insist on "Walk
slowly", not "walk slow".  There is no historical basis for their
judgment.  Could it be that "good" is going the way of "fast"
slow?

Herb

>>> lynnem at COGS.SUSX.AC.UK 01/31/01 08:07AM >>>
OK, I'm taking some grief for being a prescriptivist.  I just
want to
assert that I'm G'lynne'da the Good Prescriptivist, not a nasty
one:  there
are plenty of Bad Prescriptivist things that I disagree with
(e.g.,
anything sexist or based in misunderstandings of grammatical
categories);
my prescriptivism is almost entirely limited to the written form
in
specific (more careful or formal) contexts (which, I've argued
here before,
deserves a standard in a way that speech does not need and cannot
support);
and I recognize that there's a lot of arbitrariness in those
prescriptions,
but there's a lot of arbitrariness in culture-determined
behavior
generally, and I enjoy those conventions--in part because having
conventions allows you to exploit and flout them.  (Do I get the
prize for
January's longest sentence on ADS?  Note that I don't necessarily
count
e-mail to ADS-L as a 'careful or formal' context!)  I also
recognize that
not following these prescriptions (while not flouting them
either) is not a
sign of defective thinking.  But as a teacher and editor, I have
a certain
respect for some prescriptive traditions, and believe that
metalinguistic
awareness of them is never a bad thing.

OK, after all that, I stand by my assertions that (a) plenty of
Americans
say 'couldn't care less', and (b) lots of US English teachers
are
particular about this (I remember a couple of mine in particular
as well as
my colleagues there).  Also, sorry Larry, but I really doubt
your
supposition (if I'm understanding it correctly) that there's
something
ironic about US usage of 'I could care less'.  I think it's just
an
unanalysed idiom for a lot of people--which means that I do agree
with you
that its phonological reduction is not really semantically
damaging.  But
this means that simple phonological reduction is the whole story
for why
it's lost--lexicalization (idiomatization?) of the phrase was a
necessary
first step.

Now, on a tangentially related topic, I've come to realize that
Englishfolk
frequently don't 'get' US ironic or self-deprecatory use of
non-standard
forms and ascribe all instances to the lack of a standard (or
the
'degradation' of the standard in the US).  A couple of
Englishpeople have
complained to me that, while assuring me they like US English,
they can't
take it that (not 'when' but 'that') Americans use adjectives
where they
should use adverbs (and at least one of them expressed fear that
this is
coming into US English).  The example they cite?  "You did/done
good" (as
heard on 'Friends' or 'Frasier' or whatever).  Now, when I say
"you done
good", there's a humor about it--it involves friendly
encouragement as well
as a bit of self-consciousness about making the compliment.
Now,this is
not to say that all people use it this way, but I think there is
a
difference for a lot of people in the contexts and meaning
involved when
one says "you did/done good" and "you did well".  Or am I living
in an
idiolectal fantasyland?

Lynne


M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320