“Language Hat”:http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001217.php has an excellent post up about a silly list of ‘mispronunciations’ that’s been apparently doing the rounds.
To get the full effect you really have to read the whole thing, but I will answer one of Mr. Hat’s questions. No, of course the author of the list doesn’t recommend pronouncing the _c_ in _Connecticut_. As every fule nose, the correct pronunciation is ON-NECK-TEA-COO.
{ 22 comments }
Keith M Ellis 03.21.04 at 11:28 am
Thank goodness for Language Hat. That list mightily annoyed me.
Keith M Ellis 03.21.04 at 8:35 pm
Or, I’ll open another line of discussion. I’ve noticed that people that are (in my estimation) very ignorant are extremely descriptivist about language. Sophomoric people are prescriptivists. The most knowledgeable are descriptivists who are reformed prescriptivists with a still-latent prescriptivism.
I tend to consider myself in the third group, of course. But if you’re familiar with Language Hat, as I am, you’ll notice that even he reveals occasional middle-school teacher sensibilities.
Anyway, I think the acid test for something like the subject at hand is whether or not there is a high concordance between the speaker’s and the listener’s understanding of the word or phrase in question. Some so-called errors reflect genuine misunderstandings; most do not.
John Quiggin 03.21.04 at 9:24 pm
I’ll out myself as a hardline prescriptivist, on semantics at least, and will try to make a case for this. (Almost) no-one denies that there are good and bad writers, and that one characteristic of bad writers is that they commit semantic errors indicating that they don’t know their own language very well (for example, “impact” for an ambiguous combination of “affect” and “harm”, or “refute” for “deny”). Changing the context from written language to speech doesn’t change this. Some native speakers are (semantically better) than others.
It’s true that “If it prosper, none dare call it treason”. Sufficiently widespread error eventually becomes the norm. An example is “methodology” used as a fancy synonym for “method” instead of (or sometimes in ambiguous confusion with} the branch of philosophy of science dealing with the study of “method”.
But such cases are rare. More importantly, prescriptivist scorn for error is a major factor in keeping them rare.
A minor point is that printing seems to have stabilised a lot of battle lines (the fight over “aggravate” goes back as far as Dickens, or so I’ve read) and has nearly eliminated the steady change in language that is an important element of the descriptivist case.
Keith M Ellis 03.21.04 at 9:47 pm
John — but your argument rests upon a Platonic conception of language:
The point of that quote (re: treason) is subtly but emphatically not relativist—it’s a repudiation of relativism. Treason remains treason by its very nature.
Similarly, your argument seems to assume that, for example, “methodology” has a Platonic meaning manifest from its construction and, if necessary, its etymology. But that’s simply not true. “Methodology” means what, by consensus, people think it means. No more and no less.
I have one more word for you: homonym.
Keith M Ellis 03.21.04 at 9:49 pm
By the way, if I’m looking for an ambiguous combination of “affect” and “harm” (because, for example, the effect is ambiguous), I’ll know to use “impact”. Thanks. :)
John Quiggin 03.21.04 at 10:34 pm
Keith – of course the treason analogy is a repudiation of relativism: that’s why I used it.
I don’t see how you infer from what I wrote that I believe that words have Platonic meanings. That may be a common, and easily refuted, belief among naive prescriptivists, but I don’t share it.
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