atw: Re: Youse
- From: "Michael Lewis" <Michael.Lewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:26:44 +1100
Terry Dowling:
> I know of a lot of folk who are a lot smarter than me, but whose English
> is crap.
Define "crap". If you were to write a user guide for a violent video game aimed
at a teenage market in the same language as you would use for a high-end
digital camera, your teenage readers would surely describe your writing as
"crap".
> I'm saying that rather than all of us moving to the lowest common
> denominator as it seems you would prefer, those of us who are
> professional writers should comply with commonly accepted rules, as
> decreed by commonly accepted authorities such as whatever dictionary we
> choose and whatever style manual or other guides we may choose. At least
> if some of us get things "right", others may be able to learn. That way
> more folk may be able to improve their skills rather than deskilling the
> rest of us.
I've seen no evidence that Geoffrey wants to move to the lowest common
denominator. He simply acknowledges that language is mutable.
> The best way of communicating is using the best and most appropriate
> word for your meaning.
If word choice is all you are going to think about, you are not going to
communicate effectively. Language is more than words; it's also principles for
constructing clauses, sentences, paragraphs, and texts.
> "non-standard" is dictionary speak for that word you don't use for language.
No; it's an implicit acknowledgement that English, and probably every other
language on the planet, exists in multiple forms called dialects or sociolects.
Only one dialect / sociolect gets termed "standard", but that doesn't stop
people from other social groups using their own form of the language. Being
non-standard doesn't make those other forms incorrect.
> I really think that you are starting to enter weasel-word territory when
> you don't like 'wrong' or 'incorrect'. Ask an English teacher if there
> are rights and wrongs in language. Maybe there are fewer in
> communcations.
English teachers are precisely those people who perpetuated nonsense like
"Don't begin a sentence with and or but or so", "Don't split an infinitive",
"Don't end a sentence with a preposition". When they call something "incorrect"
they are, as Geoffrey says, making a category mistake.
This whole series of related threads has revealed a tragic problem in a
community of professional users of language. We should not talk about "correct"
English; we should talk about "good" English. And "good" English is not some
divinely decreed version of the language; it is whatever works best in the
immediate circumstances. "Good" English, otherwise (misleadingly) called
"plain" English, is simply "appropriate" English - nothing more, nothing less.
Michael Lewis
Lecturer
Department of Linguistics
MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY NSW 2109
Phone: +61 (0)2 9850 7856
Mobile: +61 (0)414 887782
Fax: +61 (0)2 9850 9199
www.ling.mq.edu.au
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