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

[Robert S. Wachal]

Good on ya, Lynne.  I'm with you 110 percent.

Bob Wachal

At 01:07 PM 1/31/01 +0000, you wrote:
>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
>
>