R()BIN F()X: THE HUMAN RIC;HT::-- CHARADE
HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ APRIL 2001
TENSE PRESENT Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage By David Foster Wallace ------+ ------STAR OF JUSTICE On the Job with America's Toughest Sheriff By Barry Graham OUT OF PRINT The Future of Publishing, Seen from the Inside By Michael Korda CURLY RED
04>~ Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates ~ ••• i Plus: Cristina Nehring and Robert Vivian f:t •••'"------+ ------F o L o
"Save up to 50%,-and More!" Betwe~n youand 1. On accident. Somewhat of a. Kustom Kar Kare Autowash. "The cause was due to numerous factors." "Orange Crush-A Taste That's All It's Own, ".''Vigorex, Helping men conquer sexual issues." "Equal numbers of both men and women oppose the amend- ment." Feedback .."As drinking water becomes more and more in short supply." "IMATION-Borne of 3M Innovation." Point in time. Time Frame. "At this. point il)-time: the individual in question was observed, and subsequently apprehended by author-ities." Here for you, there for you. Fail to compJy with for violate. Comprised of. From whence. Quote for quotation. Nauseous for nameated. Besides the point. To mentor, to parent. To partner. To critique. Indicated for !aid. Para- meters for limits and options for choices and viable optionHor optiOns and workable solution for solution. In point of fact. Prior to this time. As of this point in the time frame. Serves to. Tends'to be. Convince for persuade. Append for aHach, portion for pari. Commence, cease. Expedite. Request for ask. Ev,nfuate for happen. Subsequent to this time. Productive. Facilitate. Aid in. Utilize. Detrimental. Equates with. In rega~ds '1J~ ~ 4#td, '1 to. Tragic, tragedy. Grow as transitive. Keep for s1cry. "To demonstrate the power of Epson' s new Stylus Color Inkjet Print- . . . er with 1440 d.p.i., just listen," Could care less. Issues, core issues. Fellow colleagues. 'Goal-orientated. Resources. Unproductive. Feelings. Share for speak, Nurture, empower: recover. Valid for true. Authentic. lTodu~tive, unproductive. "1 choose to view my opponent's negative ;tta~ks as unproductive to the real issues fa<;ing the citizens of this campaign." Incumbent upon. Mandate. Plurality. Peranum. Conjunctive adverbs in general. Instantaneous. Qua1i!J' as adj. Proac- tive. ProactiveMissio';'-Statement. Positive feedback. A positive role-model. Compensation. Validation. As for example. True facts are often impactful. "Callnow for your free gift!" I only wish. 'Not too good of a. Pay the consequences of. At this juncture. "Third- leading cause of death of both American men and women." To reference. To process. Process. The process of. The healing process. The grieving process. "Processing of feelings is a major component of the grieving process." Commensurant. "Till the stars fall from the sky/For-you and I." Workin;together. Efficacious, effectual. Lifestyle. This pheno~ena, these criter-ion, Irregardless. Iffor" whether. - "Both sides are working together to achieve a workable consensus." Functional, dysfunctional. Family of origin. S.O. To nest. Rela- -,uonship. Merg~ together. KEEPIN IANE. Whomever wants it. "My wife and myself wish to express our gratitude and thanks to you for being here 'to support us at this difficult time in our life." Eventuate. Diversity. Quality time. Values, family values. To conference. "French provincial twin bed with canape and box spring, $iSO." Take a wait-and-see attitude. Cum-N-Go Quik Mart. Travelodge. Self- lADY'S ROOM confessed. Precise estimate. ' . . ' "Travel-times .on the ex- presswaysare reflective of its still being bad out there." Budgetel. EZPAY.RENT20WN. MENS' ROOM.'LADY'S ROOM. Individual for person. Whom for who, that for who. TensePreserit "The accident equated to a lot of damage." Ipse dixie. Falderol. "Waiting on' is a dialectical locution on the rise and splitting its meaning. "'Staunch the flow. A.M. in the morning. Forie as "forte."Advisement. Most pemocrary, English, and the especially. Sum total. Fi':'al totals. Complete d~arth. "You can donate your used car or truck in any con- dition." "DiBlasi's work shows how sex can bring *zrs over Usage . people together and pull them apart. " "Come in and take advantage of our knowledgeable staff." 'We get l' . the job done, not make excuses." "Chances of rain are prevalent." National Highway Traffic Safety Ad- BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ministration Rule and Regulation~endment Tas'Je Force. Furiher for fariher. "The Fred Pryor-Seminar has opened my eyes to better time management tech- niques. Also it has given real life situations and how to-deal with them effectively." Hands-on, can-do. "Each of the variants indicated in boldface type count as an entry." Visualjzation. "Insert and tighten metric calibrated hexscrews (K) into arc (C) comprised of intersecting vertical pieces W along transverse sec- tion of Structure. (see Diagram for #(3-4inv.)" Creative, creativity. To message, to send a message, to bring our message to. To read, out-to. Context. StraightJ:>ced. 'A factor, a decisive factor. Myriad"pf decisive factors: "It is a federal requirement to comply with all safety regulations on this "flight." In this context, of this context. On a --ly basis. From the standpoint of. Oontestualieation. Within the parameters of this context. Decontextualiaarion. Defamiliarize. Orientated. "The artist's employment of a radi~al,visual idiom serves to decontextualize both conventio~al modes of representation-and the patriarchal contexts on which such traditional hegemonic notions as representation, tradition, and even conventional contextualization have come to b~ seen as depending for their privi- leged status as aestheto-interpretive mechanism~." I don't feel well and hope I recoup. "As parents, the responsibilitY oftallcing to your kids about drugs is up to you." Who would of thought? Last and final call. As to. Achieve. Achievement. Competitive. Challenge, challenged, challenges. Excellence ..-Pursuit of a' standard of total excellence .. An astute observance. Misrepresent for lie. A longstanding tradition of achievement in the arena of excellence. "All copier stores are not the same." Visible to the eye. Which for thai, !.for me. That which. In regards to. Dctcas singular, media as singular, graffiti as Singular. Remain for s1llJ1. On-task. Escalate as.transitive. Closure. Community. "Iran must realize that it cannot flaunt with impunity the expressed will and law of the world community." Com- munity support. Community-based. Broad appeal. Rally support. Outpourings of support. "Tried to lay the cause' at the feet Not too good of a of Congress. " Epidemic proportions. Proportionate response. Feasibility. "This anguishing national ordeal." Bipartisan, non- . . partisan. Widespread outbreaks. To appeal to. To impact. Author's Foreward. Hew and cry. From 'this aspect. Hayday. Appro- priate, inappropriate. Contingency. Contingent upon. Every possible contingency. Audible to the ear. As for since. Palpably. "The enormity of his accomplishment." Frigid temperatures. Loud volume. Surrounded on allsides; my workable options are at this time few in number. Chaise lounge, nucular, deep-seeded, beCl- roo~ suit, reek havoc. Her ten-year rein atop the competition. The reason is because she still continues to hue to the basic fundamentals. Ouster. Lucrative salaries, expensive prices. Forbear for forebear;forgo for forego. Breech of conduct. Award for meretricious service. Substantiate, unsubstantiated, substantial. Re- elected to another term. Fulsome praise. Service. Public service. "A traditiqn of servicing your needs." A commitment to accountability in a lifetime of pub- Iic service. As best as we can. WAVEALLINTERESTFOR 90 DAYS"But I also want to have-be the president that protects the ;ights of, of people to, to have arms. And that-so you don't go so far.that the legitimate ·rights on some legislation are, are"you know, impingedon." "Dr. Charles Frieses'." Conflict. Conflict-. resolution. The mut~al advantage of both sides in this widespread conflict. "Wewill make a deterrnirration in terms of an appropriate response." Future plans. Don't go therei'PLEASE WAITHERE UNTIL NEXTAVAILABLECLERK.I thought tomyself Fellow countrymen. "Your efforts to recover f~om the experience of growing up in an 'alcoholic family may be very difficult and threatening for your family to hear about and accept, especially if they are still in the midst of their own-survival." Misappropn"ate for,steal. Nortorious. I'll be there momentarily. At some later-point in time. I'm: not adverse to that. "Hello-o ?" Have a good one. Luv Ya. ,), " . \
Davw. Foster Wallace is a contributing editor to Harper's'Magazine'rmd the author of the novel Infinite Jest and other works. His most recent piece foithis magazine, "Brief Inte!vlews with Hideous Men," appeared in the October 1998 issue.
FOLIO·39 !I i # •• .•." ~V. " , ...... '.' ,,~
DiscUssed in this essay: dictionary is extremely good, certainly the A Dictiorlary of Modem American Usage, by Bryan A, most comprehensive usage guide since E. W. ...' Garner, Oxford University Press, 1998. 723 pages. Gilman's Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, • ~ e , $35. . now a decade out of date.' Its format, like that 1· ;'-41' A Dictionary of Modem English Usage, by H. W. Fowler. .. of Gilman and the handful of other great '.. Oxford University Press, J 926. Rev, by Sir Ernest American usage guides of the last century, '."' " Gowers, 1965,725 pages. includes entries on individual words and "phrases' and expostulative small-cap MINI- The Lariguage Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, ESSAYS on any issue broad enough to warrant by Steven Pinker. William Morrow and Company, 1994.494 pages. more general discussion. But the really dis- tinctive and ingenious features of A Dictionary Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, E, W. Gilman; of Modern American Usage involve issues of ed. Merriam-WebsterInc., 1989.978 pages. rhetoric and ideology and style, and it is . , Usage and Abusage: A Guide' to Good English, by Eric impossible to describe why these issues are, Partridge. Hamish Hamilton; 1957.392 pages. important and why Garner's management of · ... 1 .". .Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the Eng- . them ,borders on genius without talking' about & the historical, contexts in which ADMAU ~" lish Laniuage, Philip Gave, ed. G. C. Merriam , , Company, 1961. 2,662 pages. appears, and this context turns out to be a ver- •. -I.,.,:. ,.. •• f .. itable hurricane of controversies involving .•.. :to • .•.. ,.' everything from technical linguistics to public • . Dilige et quod visfac. education to political ideology, and these con- -ST. AUGUSTINE troversies take a certain amount of time to unpack before their relation to what makes' id·you know that probing the seamy,. Garner's usage guide so eminently worth your ~"., . underbeLly of U.S. lexicography . hard-earned reference-book dollar can even l,·11 •••.•• . reveals ideological strife and centro- . be established; and in fact there's no way D, versy and intrigue and nastiness and even to begin the whole. harrowing polymeric fervor on a nearly hanging-chad kale? For.' , discussion without'taking a moment to estab-
, • '~-fl •• -; .' instance, did you knowthat some modem dic- lish and define the highly colloquial term • 1) ~ .• tionaries are notoriously liberal and others noto-, SNOOT . riouslv conservative, and that certain conserva- . Fromoneperspective, a certain irony attends .," .'11\\1 tive dictionaries were actually conceived' and the publication of imy good' new book on ', II. designed as corrective responses to the "corrup- . . American usage. It is-that thepeople who-are . ", tion"and "permissiveness" of cer- going to be interested in such a.' tain .liberal dictionaries? That the Precise estimate book are also the people who are oligarchic device of having a spe- least going to need it, i.e., that ·tt". ",' P" cial "Distinguished Usage Panel, . , of outstand- offering counsel on the finer points of U.S...... •', ing professional speakers' and writers" is an English is.Preaching to the Choir. The relevant ~ I • " attempted, compromise between the forces of Choir here comprises thatsmall percentage of " · •'. egalitarianism and traditionalism in English, but American citizens who actually care about the' .~.-. ' .... that most linguistic liberals dismiss the Usage current status of double modals and .ergative Panel as mere sham-populism! verbs. The same sorts of people 'who watched Did you know that U.S. lexicography even Story of English, on PBS (twice) and read W. had a.seamy underbelly? . Safire's column with their half-caff every I Sunday. The sortsof people who feel that spe- he occasion fOT this arti~le is cial blend of wincing despair and sneering supe- ·. ,. ' . . Oxford University Press's semi- riority when they see EXPRESS LANE-lO ITEMS recent release of Bryan A. Gamer's' OR LESS or hear dialogue used as a verb or 'realize TA Dictionary of Modern American that the founders of the Super 8 motel chain Usage. The fact of the matter is that Gamer's must surely have been ignorant of the meaning .,. ~omprehenaiTe and good, boutita equivalent phra.e that isn't even the fact that this rmewer almost ...• ! With the 'advent of online data- .. " emphasis is on British usage.) "orse. (I actually tried "Iesico- always • ...,ers and! or winces "hen bases, Garner has access t~. far temporal backdrop" in one of the he sees "hi.to~ical context" de- "j more examples of actual usage' \I Sorry about this phrase; I hate' middle draft., which I think ployed in a piece .. ~.. t I • ~ ·r -. 40 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I APRIL 2001 ...i'_l ./ of suppurate. There are l~ts of epithets for peo- how very few other Americans know this stuff ple like this-Grammar Nazis, Usage Nerds, or even care, and we judge them accordingly. Syntax Snobs, the Language Police. The term I In ways that certain of us are uncomfortable was raised with isSNooT.3 The word might be about, SNOOTs'attitudes about contemporary slightly self-mocking, but those other terms are usage resemble religious/political conservatives' outright dysphemisms,A SNOOTcan be defined as attitudes about contemporary culture.t We com- . somebody who knows what dysphemism means bine a missionary zeal and a near-neural faith in and doesn't mind letting you know it. our beliefs' importance with a curmudgeonly I submit that we SNOOTsare just about the hell-in-a-handbasket despair at the way English last remaining kind of truly elitist nerd. There is routinely manhandled and corrupted by.sup- are, granted, plenty of nerd-species in today's posedly educated people. The Evil is all around America, and some of these are elitist within us: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers their own nerdy purview (e.g., the skinny, car- and bursts of voguish linguistic methane that buncular, semi-autistic Computer Nerd moves make any SNOOT'scheek twitch and forehead instantly up on the totem pole of status when darken. A fellow SNOOTI know likes to say that your screen freezes and now you need his help, listening to most people's English feels like and the bland condescension with which he watching somebody use a Stradivarius to pound performs the two occult keystrokes that nails: We5 are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled unfreeze YGlUrscreen is both elitist and situa- at Everyone Else: ' tionally valid). But the 'SNOOT's purview is interhuinan social life itself. You don't, after.all THESIS STATEMENT (despite withering cultural pressure), have to ' ', ..."f FOR WHOLE ARTICLE use a computer, but you can't escape language: .'. ".'l Language is everything and everywhere: it's ssuesof tradition vs. egalitarianism in what lets us have anything to do with one ';' U.S. English are at root political issues another; it's what separates us from the animals; and can be effectively addressed only in Genesis 11:7-10 and so on. And we SNOOTs Iwhat this article hereby terms a know when and how to hyphenate phrasal "Democratic Spirit." A Democratic Spirit is adjectives, and to keep participles from' dan- one that combines rigor and humility, i.e., pas- 't' • 'gling, and we know that we know, and we know sionate conviction plus sedulous' respect for , of I", ~------"";""'"------is basically that of somebody teach- grandfather and actually uses the ., ", " 3 SNOOT(n) (lUglUy colloq) is this INTERPOLATION '" ing HIV prevention to intra- word genetic, and it' s p~obably , reviewer's nuclear family's nick- As something I'm all but sure .. ve:nous-drug. users. When it true: 95 p~rcent of the SNOOTsI name il deffor a really extreme Harper', will aci~, I'll also in- ell1erges (as it does, every time) Icnowha~e at least oile parent who · ~..~. usage fanatic, the sort of person sert that we even had a lighthearted • •. f ".,' that 93 percent of these intelli- is, by profeSsion or temperament whose idea of Sunday fun is to· ..,... . but retrospectively chilling little .. gent upscale college students have or both, a SNOOT.In my own case, loole for mistalces in Safi~'s col- family .opgthat Mom and we lit- ~e , ;. ,. ,'4~ never been taught, e.g., what a my mom is a Comp teacher and < ~ ,,..' " _ I umn's prose itself. This review- tle SNOOTlets would sing in the clause is or why a misplaced on- has written remedial usage boob e : er's family is roughly 70 percent car on long trips while I>Ildsilent- s«, ly can male a sentence c.onfus- .s. SNOOT,which term itself derives and is a SNOOTof the most rabid ly rolled hi. eyes and drove (you .... and intractable sort. At least part ' frot!' an acronym, with the big ing, I all but pound lI1yhead on have to rememher the title theme historical family joice being that the blackbo"rd., I exhort them to of the reason I am a SNOOTis that ot Uududo&,in order to follow the .• " ~If ': •.; \ • ,. " , fI , FOLIO 41 ...' ,.,." " .. '; , . .'. ; ~ :" ...,.,•• I ~ ' , .. ... the convictions of others. As any American "Dictionary' of Modem American Usage '" '." ....•. ' knows, this is a very difficult spirit to cultivate has no Editorial Staff or Distinguished .' . . and maintain; particularly when it comes to , Panel. It's conceived, researched, and issues you feel strongly about. Equally tough is Awritten ab .ovo usque ad mala by Bryan a D.S.'s criterion of 100 percent intellectual Garner.' This is an interesting guy. He's both a integrity-e-you have to be willing to look hon- lawyer and a lexicographer (which seems a bit estly at yourself and your motives for believing like being both a narcotics dealer and a DEA what you believe, and to do it more or less ., agent). His 1987 A Dictionary 'of Modem Legal continually. , ' Usage is already a minor classic; now, instead of , This kind of stuff is advanced u.s. citizen- practicing law anymore, he goes around con- ship. A true Democratic Spirit is up there with ducting writing seminars for ].D.'sand doing '" religious faith and emotional maturity and all prose-consulting for various judicial bodies . . those other top-of-the-Maslow-Pyramid-type Gamer's also the founder of something called . , qualities people spend their whole lives work- the H. W. Fowler Society,6 a worldwide group of ing on. A Democratic Spirit's constituent rigor usage-Trekkies who like to send one another " and humility and honesty are in fact so hard to linguistic boners clipped from different periodi- maintain on certain issues that it's almost irre- cals. You get the idea. This Gamer is one seri- . sistibly tempting to fall in with some estab- ous and very hard-core SNOOT. V .~t...•"',•.!-•.• t . .' '" ...., lished dogmatic camp and to follow that camp's The lucid, engaging, and extremely sneaky , •.•. :eo line on the issue and to let your position hard: Preface to ADMAU serves to confirm Gamer's " ~- .... '. , en within the camp and become inflexible and snoortrude in fact while undercutting it in ..-.;,," to believe that any other camp tone. For one thing, whereas the traditional ~,.-: ",;' .•ft" , , GOdL-ol'ifmt«ted is either evil or insane and to usage pundit cultivates a sort of remote and spend all your time and energy imperial persona-the kind who uses one or we ,'.-,•.... trying to shout over them.' . , to refer to hirnself-e-Gamer gives us an almost ...•-. -:-. .,. I submit, then, that it is indisputably easier Waltonishly endearing sketch of' his own to be dogmatic than Democratic, especially' background: about issues that are both vexed and highly charged. I submit further-that the issues sur- I realized early-at the age of 157-that my pri- ,rounding' "correctness" in contemporary mary intellectual interest was the use of the " . American usage are both vexed and highly English language .... It became an all-consuming charged, and that the fundamental questions passion .. , . I read everything I could find on the subject. Then, on a wintry evening while visiting' ' they in:volve are ones whose answers have to '0 ft. _, New Mexico atthe age of 16, I discovered Eric be "worked out" instead of simply found. Partridge's Usage and Abusage. I was enthralled. A distinctive feature of ADMAU is that its au- Never had I,held a more 'exciting book .... Suffice thor is willing to acknowledge that a usage dic- ,. . .. it to ~ay that by the time I was 18, I had commit' .; ., tionary isnot a bible or even a textbook but rather ted to memory most of Fowler, Partridge, and their • _•••.•• -, 'I just the record of one smart person's attempts to successors.'... work out answersto certain very difficultquestions. .. This willingness appears to me to be informed by Although this reviewer regrets the bio- -".~. .. a DemocraticSpirit. The big question is whether sketch's failure to mention the rather significant .. '. such a spirit compromises Garner's ability to pre- social costs of being an adolescent whose over- '. ,i· sent himself as a genuine "authority" on issuesof riding passion is English usage,8 the critical hat ,0 .,' ''''. .' usage. Assessing Garner's book, then, involves is off to yet another personable section of the •.,,-f , trying to trace out the very weird and complicat- Preface, one that' Garner entitles "F[fst ed relationship between Authority and Democracy Principles": "Before going .any further, I should • '. in "hat we as a culture have decided is English. , explain my approach. That's an unusual thing That relationship is, as many educated Ameri- for the author ofa usage dictionary to do- cans would say,still in process ~t this time. unprecedented, as far as lknow, But ~ guide to subsequent classic in the fi~ld, taught that this rule applies j!Ut ~ 6 HSamueIJohnson is the Shab- 8 From per.onal experience, I • from Eric Partridge's and to Buainea Writingand that in aU " apure ofE~lUh usagoo,think of U..,e can'lISIIUreyouthat anylid likethis .. Abwageto Theodore Bei-nJtein's other mode. you spell out one ", is goingto be at beatmarginalized Henry Watson Fowler as the through nineteen' and.start Tile Careful Writer to Wilson and at worataavagelyand repeat- Eliot or Joyce. His 1926 A Dic- uaiDg~at 20.· Degwtibu.s Follett's Modern American edlyWedgied. ,tionar, of Modern EnKlisil non eat rlisputllndum.> ,UoagetoGilman'. '89 Webster's. Uoageis th&grl\nddaddyof mod- •Editor'sNo~: TheHarper's at,rle ern usa~ guides, and ita dust- 7 (Garner preacri1>easpelling 0:" manWlI prucribes spelliJJKout cbywitand bluahleas impmoua- only n,umben under ten. I was an numbers up to 100. nelS ha...,been modeu for every Could care less .•..." .. 42 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I APRIL 2001 •." , J- .to '. ~ ,.' ... ,"' , ,...... " 1:. e . : ••.••• '1 • ~~,., \.~~ ..•..... , ~ It ••.• -. good writing is only as good as the principles Ion Kent State to Independent Counsels have pro- which it's based. And users should be naturally duced an influential contra-SNOOT school for , ',,' t -,',\ interested in those principles. So, in the inter- whom normative standards of English grammar , . >. tit ' ests of full disclosure ... "9' and usageare functions ofnothing butcustom and , The "~nprecedented"and "full disclosure" superstition and the ovine docility of a populace here are actually good-natured digs at Gamer's that lets self-appointed language authorities boss Fowlerite predecessors, and a subtle nod to one them around. See for example MIT's Steven camp in the wars that have raged in both lexi- Pinker in.a famous New Republic article-e/'Once cography and education ever since thenotori- introduced, a prescriptive rule is very hard to ouslv liberal Webster's Third New International eradicate, no matterhow ridiculous. Inside the Dictionary came out in 1961 and included such Writing establishment, the rules survive by the terms as heighth and irregardless without r7. same dynamic that perpetuates ritual gen- any monitory labels on them. You CCin cLPaU 'ital rnutilations-c-or, at a somewhat low- think of Webster's Third as sort of the, ,1'1 ~ er pitch, Bill Bryson in Mother Tongue: Eng- Fort Sumter of the' contemporary Usage Wars. lish and How It Got That Way: These Wars are both the context and the target Who sets down all those rules that we all know .•.: . of a very subtle rhetorical strategy in A ~Dictio- about from childhood-the idea that we must nary of Modern Am~rican Usage, and without o ~o~hl> 't, " never end a seiJ.ten~ewith a prepositionor begin - talking about them it's impossible to explain one with a conjunction, that we must use each, . t.' •. ~ ~.. why Gamer's book is both so good and so sneaky. other for two things and one another for more than " . We regular citizens tend to go to The Dic- two... ?The answer,surprisinglyoften, is that no . -. '~'~.. ' tionary for authoritative guidance.'? Rarely, one does,that when youlook into the background ••• of these "rules"there is often Iirtle basisfor them. • 0 " however, do we ask ourselves who decides what ,', . r '~. l gets in The Dictionary or what wordsor " spellings or pronunciations get deemed "sub- In ADMAU's Preface, Gamer himself ••••~.',.I ••••.• ,~ standard'tor "incorrect." Whence the authori- , addresses the Authority Question with a " I •• - • ty of dictionary-makers to decide what's OKIl Trumanesque simplicity and candor that simul- , ... " ;, .,. and what isn't? Nobody elected them, after all. taneously disguise the author's cunning and' .' ' «: ,••. " •. And simply appealing to precedent or tradi- exemplify it: ... ' .~' I. tion won'twork, because what's considered cor- As you might already suspect, I don't shy away " '0·. rect changes over time. In the 1600s, for in- frommakingjudgments.I can't imaginethat most I. stance, the second-singular pronoun took a readersw~uldwant me to. Linguistsdon't like it, . -. .. , singular conjugation-"Ydu is." Eadier still, the . . ." "of ,course, because judgment involves sub- , .. . standard 2-S pronoun wasn't you but thou, Huge jectivity.l? It isn't scientific. But rhetoric and ". numbers of now acceptable words like clever, usage, in the view of most professionalwriters, fun, banter, and prestigious entered English as aren't scientificendeavors.Youdon't want dispas- what usage authorities considered errors or egre- sionate descriptions; you want sound guidance. gious slang. And riot just usage conventions And that requiresjudgment. but English itself changes over time; if it didn't, ,'S .. ,'f.,•• . we'd all still be talking like Chaucer. Who's to ' Whole monographs could be written just on the ,' ',' '·say which changes are natural and which are masterful. rhetoric of this passage. Note for ex- .. corruptions? And when Bryan Garner or .ample the ingenious equivocation ofjudgment in E. Ward Gilman do in fact presume to say, why "I don't shy away from making judgments" vs, should we believe them? "And that requiresjudgment," Sufficeit to saythat These sorts of questions are not new, but they Garner is at all times keenly aware of the Au- ,.. do now have a certain urgency. America is in thority Crisis in modem usage; and his response the midst of a protracted Crisis of Authority in to this crisis is-in the best Democratic'Spitit- ,~,....•.: . ;. matters oflanguage. In brief, the same sorts of po- rhetorical.' . ...•...... ;, litical upheavals thai: produced everything from So ... .t-:. '. arching criterion· fo~ correct- 9 What follow in the Preface are 10 There's;'o better indication of II Editor's Note: The Harper's ness," of which both "educated" ". , .the ten critical points that, af- The Dictionary's authority than style manual pnacribe& okay. ' '. and "actual" would re'luire sev- teryears of working on uoage prob- • eral pages of abstract darifica- that we use it to settle wagers. My ... lems, I'~ settled on. " Tbese points tion and qualification to shore own father is still to this day liv- [2 This is a dever half-truth. are too involved to treat sepa- .. ing down the outcome of a high- Linguists !,ompose only one part . up, against Usage Wars-related ;~.. ,i~ «:f rately, but a couple of them are ~.. attach, but which Garner rather stakes bet on the correct spelling of the anti-judgment camp, and ... , slippery in the extreme-e.g., . ingeniously elects to define and of meringue, a wager made on 14 their objections to usage judg- ". Aetual Uoage. In the end, , '_ ,..~ "roo September 1978, ments involve waymore than just . defend via their application in. the actual usage of educated ..~ •.. { , his dictionary itself. "subjectivity, " speakers and writers is the"over- .. ..,; .. , . to ! -..r FOLlO 43 ,.' .' ... •• :1',,,• .. , .: •.~ .. '.~. , · .....-" ., . COROLLARY TO ou'd sure know lexicography had • "Il. . THESIS STATI::MENT . an underbelly if you read the little .r , .' . introductory essays in modern die- • 011 • ' ~ FOR WHOLE ARTICLE 1,;i ~ Ytionaries-pieces like Webster's he most salient and timely feature of DEU's "A Brief History of English' Usage" or Gamer's book is that it's both lexi- Webster's Third's "Linguistic Advances and . cographical and rhetoricaL Its main Lexicography"or AHD-3's' "Usage in the Tstrategy involves what is known 'in' American Heritage Dictionary: The Place of classical rhetoric as the Ethical AppeaL Here Criticism." But almost nobody ever bothers the adjective, derived from the Greek ,ethos, with these little intros,and it's not just their , doesn't mean quite. what we usually mean by six-point type or the (act that dictionaries ethical. But .there are affinities; What the tend to be hard on the lap. It's that these Ethical Appeal amounts to is a complex and intros aren't actually written for you or. me or , , sophisticated "Trust me." It's the boldest, most the average citizen who goes to The Dic- ambitious, and also most distinctively Ameri- tionary just to see how to spell (for instance) can of rhetorical Appeals, because it requires meringue. They're written for other lexicogra- - the rhetor to convince us not just of his intel- phers and critics, and in fact they're not real- , '. . lectual acuity or technical competence but of ly introductory at all but polemical. They're ...•I ...•.: .• his basic decency and fairness and sensitivity to salvos in the Usage .Wars that have been" • ,' •. :to the audience's own hopes and fears.I3 under way evet since editor Philip Gave first <; « These are not qualities one associates with sought to apply the value-neutral principles <..~.1,' the traditional SNOOT usage-authority, a ngure' .of structural linguistics to lexicography in .:,." e , ~ _. " ,f! who pretty much instantiates snobbishness Webster's' Third. Gave's famous response to . and bow-tied anality; and one whose modem conservatives who howledt- when Webster's ., '. image is not improved by stuff like Third endorsed OK and de- •••.~t ....,' American Heritage Dictionary I thought to myself scribed ain't as "used orally in •• Distinguished Usage Panelist most parts of the U.S. by many ' ..".:. - ' Morris Bishop's "The arrant sole- cultivated speakers [sic}" was .' ·It' cisms of the ignoramus are here often omitted this: "A dictionary should have no. traffic •• entirely; 'irregardless' of how he may feel about with ... 'artificial notion~ of correctness or this ~eglect" or critic John Simon's "The superiority. It should be descriptive and not "'01.",. English language is being treated nowadays prescriptive." These terms stuck and turned · exactly as slave traders once handled their . epithetic, and linguistic conservatives are · . "" merchandise ... ," Compare those lines'. autho- now formally known as Prescriptivists and _..~ rial personas with Garner's in, e.g., "English linguistic liberals as Descriptivists. .usage is so challenging that even experienced The former are far better known, When you ~,'~. I ". . ''t .•. " • writers need guidance now and then," read the columns of William Safire or Morton ' The thrust here is 'going to be that A Freeman or books like Edwin Newman's ,.-•.. ...~. ... Dictionary of Modern American Usage earns Strictly Speaking or John Simon's Paradigms ,tI Gamer pretty much all the trust his Ethical Lost, you're actually reading Popular ,•, .~-. Appeal asks us.for, The book's "feel-good'; spir- Prescriptivism, a genre sideline of certain jour- , 'it (in the very best sense of "feel-good") marries nalists (mostly older ones, the vast majority of • ...:"I .• • > rigor and humility in such a way as to allow whom actually do wear bow ties) whose 'J">. " ~. Gamer to be exrremely prescriptive without bemused irony often masks a Colonel Blimp's ...• any appearance, of evangelism or elitist put- rage at the way the beloved English of their down. This is an extraordinary accomplish- youth is being trashed in the decadent present. :'" ment. Understanding why it's basically a rhetor- The plutocratic tone and .styptic wit of Satire If!., . tI •• " ical accomplishment, and why this is hoth his- and Newman and the best of the Pre- II I. ",. "!t' •• ~. torically significant and (in this reviewer's opin- scriptivists is often modeled after' the man- · , ... ion) politically redemptive, requires a more darin- Brit personas of Eric Partridge and H. W. r ~...•. ,. • detailed look at the Usage Wars. Fowler, the same 'Twin Towers of scholarly .,~ '.' ... 'seen a novel ~ictionary formula ·cellaneous confusions and cor- 13 In thU last respect, recall for .14 ReaDy, .howled: blistering...," improvise~t in great-part, out of ruptions. In fine, the amdously eumple W. J. Clinton's famous viewsand outraged editorials from snap judgments and the sort of awaited work that was to have "I feel your pain," which was a acroos the cll1Jl1try-from the Times theoretical improvement .that in' crowned dsadantic linguistic blatant if not particuIarly lDlIIle1ful and T.he New Yorker and good prac:ti£e impairs: and· wehave seen scholarship with a particular glo- Ethical Appeal. old Life, or q.v. this from the the gates propped wide open in ry turns out. to be a scandal and January '6~ Atlantic: "We have enthusiastic hospitality to mis- a disaster." · ... '. -c. -\ .. - .• . 44 HARPER'S MAGAZI E I APRIL ZOOI ·'.'~'.. •.., .. ;", ~ ~ ._ w· '1 ..~ ·. Prescriptivism whom Gamer talks about rever- people undergo to avoid he as a generic pronoun, ing as akid.15 or of the tense deliberate way white males now ad- Descriptivists, on the oth~r hand, d~n't have just their vocabularies around non-w.m.s. Think j ••• ; ~. , ", .'... 4 ~ ~ weekly columns in the Times. These guys tend to of today's endless battles over just the names of • ..•. '!l. be hard-core academics, mostly linguists or Comp things-"Affirmative Action" vs. "Reverse Dis- theorists. Loosely organized under the banner of crimination," "Pro-Life" vs, "Pro-Choice," "Un- structural (or "descriptive") linguistics, they are dercount" vs. "Vote Fraud," etc. doctrinaire positivists who have their intellec- The Descriptivist revolution takes a little time tual roots in the work of Auguste Comte and to unpack, but it's worth it. The structural lin- Ferdinand de Saussure and their ideological roots guists' rejection of conventional usage rules de- firmly in the U.S. sixties. The brief explicit men- pends on two main arguments. The first is acad- tion Gamer's Preface gives this crew- emic and methodological. In this age of technology, Descriptivists contend, it's the Sci- Somewhere along the line, though, usage dictio- I entific Method-s-clinically objective, value- naries got hijacked by the descriptive linguists,16who neutral, based on direct observation and demon- observe language scientifically. For the pure de- strable hypothesis-that should determine both scriptivist, it's impermissible to say that one form of language is -any better than another: as long as a. the content of dictionaries and the standards of - native speaker says it, it's OK-and,anyone who "correct" English. Because language is constant- takes a contrary stand is a dunderhead .... Essentially, ly evolving, such standards will always be fluid. descriptivists and prescriptivists are approaching Gove's now classic introduction to Webster's Third different problems. Descriptivists want to record outlines this type of Descriptivism's five basic :,~."' language as it's actually used, and they perform a use- edicts: "I-Language changes constantly; .: f~" ful function-though their audience is generally 2-Change is normal; 3-Spoken language is .. limited to those willing to pore through vast tomes '.. the language; 4-Correcmess rests upon usage; of dry-as-dust research. 5-All usage is relative." -is disingenuous in the extreme, especially . These principles look prima facie OK--com- .... the "approaching different problems" part, be- monsensical and couched in the bland simple cause it vastly underplays the Descriptivists' in- s.-v-o. prose of dispassionate SCience-but in fluence on U.S. culture. For one thing, Descrip- fact they're vague and muddled and it takes about tivism so quickly and thoroughly took over three seconds to think 'of reasonable replies to English education in this country that just about each-one of them, viz.: everybody who started junior high after c. 1970 I-OK, but how much and how has been taught to write Descriptively-via fast? ' "freewriting," "brainstorming," "journaling," a 2-Same thing. Is Heraclitean -, view of writing as self-exploratory and -expressive flux as normal or desirable as grad- rather than as communicative, an abandonment ual change? Do some changes actually serve the of systematic grammar, usage, semantics, rhetoric, language's overall pizzazz better than others? etymology. For another thing, the very language. And how many people have to deviate from in which today's socialist, feminist, minority, gay, how many conventions before we. say the lan- and environmentalist movements frame their guage has actually changed? Fifty percent? Ten sides of political debates is inforined by the De- percent? ...... - scriptivist belief that traditional English is con- r .•..•. 3- This is an old claim, at least as old as Pla- ---, ... ~:.' ceived and perpetuated by Privileged WASP to's Phaedrus. And it's specious. If Derrida and ~.. , .'.•.." Males'? and is thus inherently capitalist, sexist, the infamous Deconsttuctionists have done noth- ,'.,.. ...•.•.. " t' : t/f':-' •••••' racist, xenophobic,' homophobic, elitist: unfair. ing else, they've debunked the idea that speech is II- ':,· '...·'.,1(,··.- Think Ebonies. Think of the involved contortions language's primary instantiation.tf Plus consider · ... , ' ...,.. .. '.; It' • .• ~ III,. ~. '. Or see the near-Himalayan con- oUe~ible is simply doable (L .• 15 Note for example the mordant 16 Utter bush"a: As ADMAUs " , , descension of Fowler, here on faceredo); hutto the unlearned pith (and royal ••••) of this random body makea clear, Garner kno"s ~. \- some other people'. use of "ords , it is a mere token, of whieh he , '. snippet from Partridge'. Uaage . .,.. eDctly "hen the Descriptiviats ',' to mean things the )"orcia don't has to infer the value from the .. andAb~: contexts in "hieh he heart it started influendng language .. .. really mean: t used, because such relatives guidea. -, f '.. ~' tlDZi••••• of. 'I am not hope- .up.hotl ateDaioll ... ia es- . as it has in EngIW.-feat, fea- It •• ''-... ~ less of our future, But 1am '.". pecially likely to occur when ture, faction, &:c.-either fail· 17 ("hich. in fact is true) ~ .. profoundly anDOUSof it' , Bev-: , •..,." . aome accident gives currency to sh_ the obvious family like- erley NichoL., N •••••of Eng- ..''Il;"! ".' among the uneducated to words ness to "hich he is accustomed IS (Q:v. "The Pharmakon" in ~.' ; ":"f ~ ~ land, 1938: "hieh made us ofleamed origin, &:the more among families of indigenous Derrida's La rlissiminatio.-but • -. • ll" profoundly anxious for (or if they are isolated or have.f_ "orda, or are (like malfea- yo~' d probably be better off just '...... •...• l... • about)-not ol=-Mr Nieh"Is'a relatives in the vernacu- sance) outside his range. trusting me.) ~~. ~ . ..~,f." .•. OIl literary future. lar .... The original meaning . . p -; •••• -tt:.--' .: ,.•.. ", ~ -. • ", : -i' w~: 1i" ", .11 , •." , 'I' . . ,.;; -_ . FOLIO 45 . · .,'.. ..• . #I ••" 4 -~------_ ..•..•t.: 'id •• : 'I'- .; j ~ •••• ~.:. • ': I· ••• "M. ' •• . \ the weird arrogance of Goves (3) w/r/t correctness. tv, for one thing. Even in the physical sciences, Only the most mullahlike Prescriptivists care very everything from quantum mechanics to o " ( much about spoken English; most Prescriptive Information Theory has shown that an act of iii e , usage guides concern Standard Written English.19 observation is itself part of the phenomenon J • .;' ~ .4-Fine, but whose usage? Gove's (4) begs observed and isanalytically inseparable' from' it. I '~~ the whole question. What he wants to imply . If you remember your old college English class- J.:: •• 1 Brahmins? Rural Midwesterners? Appalachian I jectively describe meanings that were right · , " . • '. . Neogaelics? .there-literally inside-pieces of literature. French provmClal . 5-Huh? If this means what ,Whetheryou know what happened to the New' ¥' • .twin bedwith canape it see.~s to mea~, then it ends Criticism's reputation depends on whether you , .,.;~...... "', . • " up biting Gove s whole argu- took college English after c"1975; suffice it to ·t '1f :~ andbu spring, $150. ment in the ass. (5) appears to say that its star has dimmed. The New Critics had , ..:..• imply that the correct answer to . the same basic problem as Gove's Methodologi- · " the above "which people?" is: "All of them!" cal Descriptivists: They believed that' scientific . And it's easy to show why this will not stand up . meant the same thing as neutral or unbiased. And as a lexicographical principle. The most obvi- that linguistic meanings could exist "objective- ous problem with it is that not everything can ly," separate from any interpretive act. •••• go in The Dictionary. Why not? Because you 'The point of the analogy is that claims to ob- can't observe every last bit of every last native jectivity in language study are now the stuff of. speaker's "language behavior," and even if you jokes and shudders. The epistemological assump- .: ,<",J. could, the resultant dictionary would' weigh tions that underlie Methodological Descriptivism • • ~ « · .•'...'.•..~: e' 4 million pounds and have to be' updated . have been thoroughly debunked and displaced-- i .• ~ • , .. hourly.s? The fact is that any lexicographer is in Lit by the rise of post-structuralism, Reader-Re- 1. going to have to make choices about what gets sponse Criticism, and [aussian Reception Theo- '..'" .•..•~ • -"·; •. .r in and what doesn't. And these choices are ry; in linguistics by the rise of Pragrnatics-s-and it's based on ... what? And now we're right back now prettymuch universally accepted that (a)' where 'we started. . meaning is inseparable from some act of inter- "~ ."It is true that, as a SNOOT, I am probably neu- pretation and (b) an act of interpretation is always rologically predisposed CO look for flaws in Gove somewhat biased, i.e., informed l>ythe interpreter's ' et al.s methodological argument, But these particular ideology. And the consequence of (a) flaws seem awfully easy to find. Probably the and (b) is that there's no wayaround it-decisions biggest one is that-the Descriptivists' "scientific about what to put in The Dictionary and what to lexicography"-under which, keep in mind, the exclude are going-to be based on a lexicographer's · . •ft,.•~ • -", ... ideology. And every lexicographer's got one. To •.... '" ideal English dictionary is basically number- crunching; you somehow observe every linguis- presume that dictionary-making can somehow tic act by every native/naturalized speaker of avoid or transcend ideology is simply to subscribe English and. put the sum of all these acts to a particular ideology, one that might aptly be between two coven and call it The Dic- called Unbelievably Naive Positivism. tionary-involves an incredibly simplistic and There's an even more important way Descrip- outdated understanding of what scientific means. tivists are wrong in thinking that the Scientific It requires a naive belief in scientific objectivi- Method is appropriate to the study of language: intended audience as "writers be capitalized after a dependent reporters and lIUl'Yf!illaneetecha; 19 StandardWrittenEnglish(SWE) and editors.· And even ads for clanle + e.1lipses-Quando'lue plua it'd be GNP-level espe...m. il also I.metim •• called Stan- the dictionary in such organa as boous dormitat HomeZWl.) dard Engliah (SE) or Edncated The New York Revie••.of Booh 21 New Critici8lJl refers. to T. S. .r, , English, but the inditement-, are built around ~e slogan"If you ~O True,some Sort oflOOpercent Eliot and I. A. Richards and einphaais is the same. F•.R. Leaviaand Cleanth Brooks '. like to WRITE ... Refer to •. ". compendious real-time Mega- ..:'IiIt. .::-' dictionary might be pO_Die on- and Wimsatt lit Beardaleyand the SEMI -INTERPOLA'nON .*' .• ' ·(Yr. SNOOT rev. cannot help ob- line, though it'd takea small army ••.hole "close readiDg"school that ,.· . - ' .•... Plua note that Garner'a pref- serving, ••./r/t these ads, that the oflencal ••.ebma.stersanli a much dominated literary critic:iamfrom ."~ . ~ce e"Plicitly names ADMAUs 0P,"Iling r in Ilder here shouldnot larger army o( in situ ac:tual-uae WWIwell into the seventies. . . ~.•.. '.- .. . .. t '~ ·..... ~ do •• 46 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I APRIL 2001 , '.~ ItJ I!f-.. ~. .: "t'; Even if, as a thought experiment, we assume a better downhill (based on the observed fact that kind of nineteenth-century scientific realism-in power lines tend to run high above the homes' which; even though some scientists' interpreta- they serve) would require the Electricity Flows tions of natural phenomena might be biased,~~the .Better Downhill Theory to be included as a natural phenomena themselves can be supposed "valid" theory in the'textbook-just as, for Dr. • ,'. '.~ •• 4) •. \. to exist-wholly independent of either observation Fries, if some Americans use infer for imply, the ••• or interpretation-no such realist supposition' use becomes an ipso facto "valid" part of the lan- can be made about "language behavior," because guage. Structural linguists like Gove and Fries this behavior is both human and fundamentally are not; finally, scientists but census-takers ~ho normative. To understand this, you have only to happen to misconstrue the importance of "ob- . accept the proposition that language is by its very served facts." It isn't scientific phenomena they're nature public-s-i.e., that there can be no such tabulating but rather a set of human behaviors, thing as a Private Languagess-c-and then to ob- and a lot of human behaviors are-to be blunt- serve the wayMethodological Descriptivists seem moronic. Try, for instance, to imagine an "au- either ignorant of this fact or oblivious to its con- .thoritative" ethics textbook whose principles sequences.as in for example one Charles Fries's were based on what most people actually do. introduction to -an epigone of Webster's Third Norm-wise, let's keep in mind that language called The American College Dictionary: didn't come into being because our hairy ances- tors were sitting around the veldt with nothing A dictionarycanbe an "authority"onlyin the sense better to do. Language was invented to serve cer- in which a book of chemistry or of physicsor of tain specific purposes.wThat mushroom is poi- botanycan bean "authoriry"-by the accuracyand sonous"; "Knock these two rocks together and the completenessofitsrecordofthe observedfacts' / ofthe fieldexamined,in accordwiththe latestprin- you can start afire"; "This shelter is,mine!" And ciplesand techniquesofthe particularscience. so on. Clearly, as linguistic communities evolve, over time, they discover that some ways of using This is so stupid it practically drools. An "au- language are "better" than others-meaning bet- thoritative" physics text presents the results of ter with respect to the community's purposes. If physicists' observations and physicists' theories we assume that one such purpose might be com- about those observations. If a physicstextbook op- municating which kinds of food are safe to eat, erated on Descriptivist principles, the fact that then you can see how, for example, a misplaced some' Americans believe that electricity flows modifier might violate an important norm: , ,.•... ·. ., . , subjective internal meaning that etc., until the whole line olthinl<- fact that a word like means pain ~ ", , 1111 ("EVIDENCE OF CANCER UNK .: ." only I can truIy underatand. This ing gets lo'vaed and uhauating .what it does lor me because of the ... t ~ • i .. REFUTED BY TOBACCO INSTITUTE · line of thinking is IOn of li1:e the that the a.p. -I. ends up slumped way the community I'm part of IlESEARCHEItS") , ~.,•,.:•..t· adolescent pot-smQker'. terror crumb-atrewn and paralyzed in baa ~citly agreed to use pain. \ . :. that his ~ inner uperience il hil chair. Ifyou're thiDIring thatall this 113 Thil proposition is in fad both private and unverifiable. a The point here is that the idea seems not only abstract butalao pm- true. II is interpolamely demon- syndrome that is technically known ofa Private Language, like Pri - ' tyirrelnantto the Usage Wars or atrated below, and although the ao Cannabic Solip"i"m. Eating vate Colors and moat of the oth- to anything you have any real in- demonstration is euremelyper- ChipIAhoy! aI!-dstaring very in- er solipsistic conceitawith which tereat in at all, you are very much lIWl8iveit is also, •• you can see tendy at ~e teleriaion'. network this partiCular reYiewer has atftr- mistaken. Hworda' meanings de- from the lize of this FN, lencthr PGA event, for inatance, the ado- ious times lieen afflicted. is both 'pend on tranaperaonal rules and and invo1Yed and rather, umm, lescent pot-Imoker il otruc:lt by deluded and demonstrablyfalae. , these rules on community con- dense, 10 that again you'd prob- the gbaatIypoaaibilily that, e.g., what In tl!-e case of Private Lan- sensus,language is not only con- ably be better off simply vant- he sees as the color green and what guage, the delusion il ulually ceptuaIly non- Private but also u:- ing the truth of the propolition other people call "the color green" baaed 'In the belief q,at a word and 'forging on with the main fen. reducibly pub'lic, political. and may in fact not be the same col- , such as pain baa the meaning it ideological. This means that 'ques- INTERPOLATIVE or e:q>eriencea at all: The fact that does because it is som~oW' "con - \ tiOtu a'bout our national conaen- DEMONSTRATION OF both he and scmeone elle call nected" to a feeling in my knee. lUI on grammar and UlIlI&" m.ac- 'THE ·FACT THAT THERE Pebble Beach'l fairways green and Butas Mr. L. Wittgenatein'l PfJilo- , tually bound up with every last IS NO SUCH THING AS a atop1.ip.t·1 GO lignal green ap- aoplllcal Inreatigationaproved in iocial i.Muethat millennia! Amer- • A PRIVATE LANGUAGE' pears to guarantee only that there the 195°0. words actually have the ica's .hout-cLua, race, 'rnder, ~':~.'.. It'l lometimes tempting to is a similar consistency in their meanings they do because of cer- morality, tolerance. pluralism, '. imapn~ that there can be such a color uperience of fairways,and tain rUles and ve,.;f;cation teats coheaion, equalily, fairness, mon- • ~f '.• \1," thing II a PriwteLanpage: Many GO lights, not that the actual sub- that aie impoled on us from qut- ey: You name it. , Ii ~~ .••• .,,, \ ; of us are prone to lay-philoao- jective qualily of those color a- lide our own aubjectivitiea, ro., by " ,_: ,f:' , ... ;.,' .•. phizing about the we.ird privacy periencel is the same; it could be the community in which we have 114 Norms, after all. are just prac- 01 •.•••• of our own mental &tates. for a- that what the ad. pot-Imoker a- to get along and communicate tices people have agreed on II op- ••• Il!. . .J . ample, and from the fad that periencel as green everyone else with other people. Wittgenatein'l timal waysof doingthinga for cer- j .: when my knee hurts only I can actually uperiencea II blue, and argument. which io admittedly tain purposel. They're not I••••• ...•.. , ~.. ..••. •••I , leel it. it'l tempting to conclude what we "mean" by the word blue very comple" and gnomic and but they're not laissez-faire. ei- ~.. . '~.~."!' ,that for me the word pain has a veJY Uwhat he -means" bygreen, etc., opaque, basically centers on the ther. ~.' , •• 1.• • f, "., •••. ,.' ~.fl. " ~. I't ~~' r... ~. j,. !i,~'~ ·'; .': 'j ..' ·f.' ••• ..: .•.., !DUO 47 . ". . r'':"l'::''~' ,------•••••••••• ------•••••• (III '" ------======'- ~-.' ~. ..•r. • ·..J •••• ;<0 -Ill ., ' "People who eat that kind of inushroom ofte~ nobody who isn't damaged in some profound Oliv- get sick" confuses the recipient about, whether er Sacksish way actually ever makes these sorts of t: '"f he'll get sick only if he eats the mushioom fre- very deep syntactic errors25 and you get the basic " fti .•.•. quently or whether he stands a good chance of proposition of Noam Chomsky's generative lin- 1-.;. fl'I' . getting sick the very first time he eats it. In oth- guistics, which is that there exists a Universal '•. er words, the community has a vested practical in- ' Grammar beneath and common to a~ languages, terest in excluding this kind of misplaced modi- plus that there isprobably an actual pari:of the hu- 'fier from acceptable usage; and even if a certain man brain that's imprinted with this Universal percentage of tribesmen screw up and use them, Grammar the Samewaybirds' brains are imprint- this still doesn't make m.m.s a good idea. ed with Fly South and dogs' with Sniff Genitals. Maybe now' the analogy between usage and There's all kinds of compelling evidence and sup- ethics is clearer. just because people port forthese ideas,not least of which are sometimes lie, cheat on their taxes, or . the advances that linguists and cogni- scream at their kids, this doesn't mean tive scientists and A.I. researchers have . .~ that they think those things are "good." been able to make with them, and the , The whole point of norms is to help us theories have a lot of credibility,and they. evaluate our actions (includmg utter- are adduced by the Philosophical De- II' ," ances) according towhat we as a com- scriptivists to show that since the really .~t:;".~~~"j munity have decided our real interests important rules of language are at birth al- ·' ..~ and purposes are. Granted, this analysis - ready hardwired into people's neoccirtex, ~.- is oversimplified; in practice it's incred-: MENS'ROOM SWE prescriptions against dangling par- ••••• Ji1.~~ • ;/ :.r ... ibly hard to arrive at norms and to keep ticiples or mixed metaphors are basical- •• them at least minimally fair or sometimes even to ly the linguistic equivalent of whalebone corsets agree on what they are (q.v,today'sCulture Wars). and short forks for salad. As Descriptivist Steven But the Descriptivists' assumption that all usage Pinker puts it, "When a scientist considers all the 'J>" ••..•• norms are arbitrary and dispensable leads to- high-tech mentalmachinerv needed to order · }. ... well, have a mushroom, words into everyday sentences, prescriptive rules .... ". . '" , The connotations of arbitrary here are tricky, are, at best, inconsequential decorations." \. though, and this sort of segues into the second ar- This argument is not the barrel of drugged gument Descriptivists make: There is a sense in trout that Methodological Descriptivism was, but " , , which specific linguistic conventions are arbi- it's still vulnerable to some objections. The first ·~~~•-•... trary.For instance, there's no particular meta- one is easy; Even if it's true that we're all wired . ' ... physical reason why our word for a four-legged with a Universal Grammar, it simply doesn't fol- mammal that gives milk and goes Moo iscow and low that all prescriptive rules are superfluous. not, say,prclmpf. The uptown phrase for this is "the Some of these rules really do seem to serve clar- arbitrariness of the linguistic sign," and it's used, ity.and precision. The injunction against two- • '. Of It along with certain principles of cognitive science way adverbs ("People who eat this often get sick")' .i! .,' , I ~,,' ... ' and gen;:rativegrammar, in a more I?hilosophically is an obvious example, as are rules about other .. sophisticated version of Descriptivism that holds kinds of misplaced modifiers .("There are many the eon vent ions of SWE to be more like the reasons why lawyerslie, some better than others") niceties' of fashion than like actual no~s. This and about relative pronouns'. proximity to the II ••• r • ..• . "Philosophical Descriptivism" doesn't care much nouns they modify ("She's the mother of an in- • ''I. about dictionaries or method; its target is the fant daughter who works twelve hours a day"). ••.•.... " , standard SNOOT claim supra-that prescriptive Granted, the Philosophical Descriptivist can ~. rules have their ultimate justification in the.com- question just how absolutely necessary these rules .'. munity's need to make its language meaningful. are-s-it's quite likely that a recipient of clauseslike The argument goes like this. An English sen~- the above could figure out what the sentences .~' .... tence's being meaningfulis not the same as its be- mean from the sentences on either side or from ' •... ~; ing grammatical. That is, such clearly ill-formed . the "overall context" or whatever. A listener can . .ill . 41' - constructions as "Did you seen the car keys of usually figure out what I really mean when I mis- r .•.... me?" or "The show waslooked by many people" use infer for imply or say indicate for say, too. But are nevertheless comprehensible; the sentences do, , many of these solecisms require at least a couple J ", .•. more or less,communicate the information they're extra nanoseconds of cognitive effort, a kind of ...•" trying to get across.' Add to th!s the fact that rapid sift-and-discard process; before the recipi- . , ."~'. .~ .<~~ .•. .,_. ,: iii (J99+), Steven Pinker puts it this Apple. the eat boy or The child maj ority, of the millions of tril- 2'5 In his The Language Instinct, " .' ' way: ttNo one, not even a valley seems sleeping or Who did you lions of mathematically possible , ... How the Mind Creates Language , ':... girl, has to be told not to 8ay meet]olua and? or the vast, vast combinations of words." ,.. ..' "~" . , • ','II" .? .•• 48 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I APRIL 2001 •• • .. ," .•., ' .. · . :. '" ':', ..... ( ,i ~\\ ~. ' ent gets it'. Extra work. It's debatable just how leg hair and give older men hideous half-denud- much extra work, but it seems indisputable that ed legs, etc. etc.). Let us grant-as a thought ex- we put some extra neural burden on the recipient periment if nothing else-that these are all rea- when we fail to follow certain conventions. W/r/t sonable and compelling objections to pants as confusing-clauses like the above, it simply seems -an androsartorial norm. Let us in fact in our more "considerate". to follow the rules of correct minds and hearts say SWE ... just as it's more.t'considerate" to de-slob yes-shout yes-to the your home before entertaining guests or to brush skirt, the kilt, the toga, your teeth before picking up a date. Not just the sarong, the jupe. more considerate but more 'respectful somehow- Let us dream of or even both of your listener and of what you're trying to in our spare time work toward an America where get across. As we sometimes also say about ele- nobody lays any arbitrary sumptuary prescrip- ments of fashion and etiquette, the way you use ,tions on anyone else and we can all go around as English "Makes a Statement" or "Sends a Mes- comfortable and aerated and unchafed and un- sage"-even though these Statements/Messages squished and motile as we want. ,often have nothing to do with the actual infor- And yet the fact remains that, in the broad'cul- mation you're trying to transmit. rural mainstream of millennial America, men do . We've now sort of bled into a more serious re- not wear skirts. If you, the reader, are a U.S. male, joinder to Philosophical Descriptivism: From the and even if you share my personal objections to fact that linguistic communication is not strict- pants and dream as I do of a cool and genitally un- ly dependent on usage and grammar it does not squishy American Tomorrow, the odds are still necessarily follow that the traditional rules of 99.9 percent that in 100 percent of public situa- usage and grammar are nothing but "incense- tions you wear pants/slacks/shorts/trunks. More, quential decorations." Another way to state the to the point, ifyou are a U .S. male and also have objection is that just because something is "dec- a U:S. male child, and if that child were to come orative" does not necessarily make it "incense- to you one evening and announce his desire/in- quential." Rhetorically, Pinker's flip dismissal is tention to wear'a skirt rather than pants to school bad tactics, for it invites the very question it begs: the next clay,I am l.Otl-percent confident that inconsequential to whom? you are going to discourage him from doing so. Take, for example, the Descriptivist claim that Strongly discourage him. Youcould be a Molotov- so-called correct English usages such as brought , tossing anti-pants radical or a kilt manufacturer ~. ./"Jl~.'~'. rather than brung and felt rather than feeled are ar- or Steven Pinker himself-you're goingto stand .' . ';',~", bitrary and restrictive and unfair and are sup- over your kid and be prescriptive about an arbi- ' ,., ported only' by custom and are (like irregular trary, archaic, uncomfortable, and inconsequen- ~:.. verbs in general) archaic and incommodious and ' tially decorative piece of clothing. Why? Well, be- .. .' .J. • • : an all-around pain in the ass. Let us concede for cause inmodern America any little boy who · . ' .....• •. . \ f,;' the moment that these,objections are 100 percent' comes to school in a skirt (even, say,a modest all-' reasonable. Then let's talk about pants. Trousers, season midi) isgoing to get stated at and shunned slacks. 1suggest to you that having the "correct" and beaten up and called a Total Geekoid by a subthoracic clothing for U.S. males be pants in- whole lot of people whose approval and accep- stead of skirts is arbitrary (lots of other cultures tance are important to him. ~6 In our culture, in let men wear skirts), restrictive and unfair (U.S. other words, aboy who wears a skirt is Makinga femalesget to wear pants), based solelyon archaic Statement that is going to have all kinds of grue- custom (I think it's got something to do with some social and emotional consequences. certain traditions about gender and leg position, Yousee where.this isgoing.I'm going to describe the same reasons girls' bikes don't have a cross- the intended point of the pants analogy in terms bar), and in certain waysnot only incommodious I'm sure are simplistic--doubtless there are whole but illogical (skirts are more comfortable than books in Pragmatics or psycholinguistics or some- pants; pants ride up; pants are hot; pants can thing devoted to unpacking this point. The weird "',. \, ' .• squish the genitals and reduce fertility; over time thing is that I've seen neither Descriptivists nor ·, , .", . ;.. pants chafe and erode irregular sections of men's SNoC)Ts deploy it in the Wars.~7 .4 •..• , " ~.'-,.. . ',' • .; .••" c." JII'~\; •• wear }tants to those jobs, it's co- , dients "the wrong message." But' to improve people's voeabulary. " " •..•,J,;. i 26Inthe FOLlO 49 .. r-i:"'s , , :-: :~. When r say or write something, there are ac- regarded as a peer.a member of somebody else's tually a whole lot of different things I am com- collective or community or.Group, Another way' :...,- ~",... municating. The propositional content (the ac- to come at this is to acknowledge something I• captures something at once very calls aU of them jargon. There ie 28 (.,.notto mention color, gen- 30 (Plus it's true that whether compla and very specific that no no ADMAU miniessay on 01- der, creed-you ean see how fraught, something gets called a ~subdi- other, English term 'luite can.- ALEafS, but there ie one onJAR- and charged all this is going t~ h alect" or "jargon 'seems to de- ,GON, in wh,ich such ie Garner's' get) -(The above is an obvious pend on how much it annoys peo- self- restraint that you can almost' •• attempt to preempt readerly ple outside its Discourse hear his tendons straining, u in .•. 29 Discourse Community ie' an sneers/winces at the term'. con" . Community. Garne" himaelfhu • !ilIt: • ~ f "(Jargon! ari.seafrom the urge to _;. •• '" · '~ · . , ~ • ,,'! ". 50 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I APRIL 2001 ., .' ..- " ,II ,,~ 't I ______------iiiIiiliiiliiliiiliiliiiliiliiiliiliiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiiiiiii"i~~r;;:",.~.~(r \". •• 'i ,.".,.:,.~ • > ._.fl$"~ -;', " ;'. t. ,:f.: . ~.~ ...... •', . ' 'use, for example, the construction "Where's it on Latin even though Latin is a synthetic lan- •..... :'~,... - at?" instead of "Where is it?" Part of this' is a guage and English is an analytic language.s" 4~•••'.- • naked desire to fit in and not get rejected as an Latin infinitives consist of one word and are ~",.,It • ..t egghead or fag (see sub). But another part is impossible to as it were split,' and the earliest • ,.!' ...• that I, SNOOTor no, believe that this and other English Prescriptivists-so enthralled with R.M.isms are in certain ways superior to their . Latin that their English Standard equivalents. usage guides were actually t2 '. For a dogmatic Prescriptivist, "Where's it at?" written in Latin33--decided ren own is double-damned as a sentence that not only that English infinitives ends with a preposition but whose final preposi- shouldn't be split either. Gamer himself takes tion forms a redundancy with where that's simi- out after the' s.i. rule in both SPLITINFINITIVES lar to the redundancy in "the reason is because" and SUPERSTITIONS.34And Hopefully 'at the (which latter usage I'll admit makes me dig my beginning of a sentence; as a certain cheeky nails into my palms). Rejoinder: First off, the eighth-grader once pointed out to his 'everlast- avoid-terminal-prepositions rule is the inven- ing social cost, actually functions not as a mis- tion bf one Fr. R. Lowth, an eighteenth-centu- placed modal auxiliary or as a manner adverb ry British preacher and indurate pedant who did . like quickly or angrily but as a "sentence adverb" things like spend scores of pages arguing for hath that indicates the speaker's attitude about the over the trendy and degenerate has. The a-t-p. state of affairs described.by the sentence (exam- rule is antiquated and stupid and only the most ples of perfectly OK sentence adverbs are ayatolloid SNOOTtakes it seriously. Gamer him- Clearly, Basically, Luckily), and only SNOOTsedu- self calls the rule "stuffy" and lists all kinds of cated in the high-pedantic years up to 1960 useful constructions like "the man you' were lis- blindly proscribe it or grade it down. tening to" that we'd have to discard or distort if The cases of split infinitivesand Hopejully are we really enforced it. in fact often trotted out by dogmatic Descrip- Plus the apparent redundancy of "Where's it tivists as evidence that all SWE usage rules are at?"3! is offset by its metrical logic. What the at arbitrary and stupid (which is a bit like pointing really does is license the contraction of is after to Pat Buchanan as evidence that all Repub- the interrogative adverb. You can't say "Where's licans are maniacs). Gamer rejects Hopefully's it?" So the choice is between "Where is it?" and knee-jerk 'proscription, too, albeit grudgingly, "Where'~ it at?", and the latter, a strong-anapest, intluding the adverb in his miniessay on is prettier and trips off the tongue better than SKUNKEDTERMS,which is his phrase for a usage "Where is it?", whose meter is either a clunky that is "hotly disputed ... any use of it is likely monosyllabic-foot + trochee or it's nothing at all. to distract smile readers." (Gamer also points This is probably the place for your SNOOT out something I'd never quite realized, which is reviewer openly to concede that a certain num- that hopefully, if misplaced/mispunctuated in ber of traditional prescriptive rules really are stu- the body of a sentence, can create some of die pid and that people who insist on them (like th~ same two-way ambiguities as other adverbs', as legendary assistant to P.M. Margaret Thatcher in the clause "I will borrow your book and hope- who refused to' read any memo with a split fully read it soon.") infinitive in it, or the jr-high teacher I had who automatically graded you down if you still-ted a ether we're conscious of it or sentence with Hopefully) are that very most , not, most of us are fluent inmore pathetic 'and dangerous sort of SNOOT, the , than one major English dialect SNOOTWho Is Wrong. The injunction against W. and in a farge number of subdi- split infinitives, for instance, is a consequence of alects and are probably at least passable in the weird fact that English grammar is modeled countless others. Which dialect you choose to ian are syntlletie; ED«lish and especiallywhen tlIere are a whole ticly dogmatic ukase can handle 31 (a redundancy that's a bit.ar- Chinese, analyti~. bunch of words b~tween to and all s.I. c:aaes,and thus that "know- bitrary, .in"" "Where's it:from?" . the verb- "Wewill attempt to swift- 'ingwhen to split an infinitive re- isn't redundant [mainly because 33 (Q..v. for oample Sir Thomas ly and to the best of our ability quires a good ear and a keen eye"- ••lienee haa vanished into semi- Smitll'. corta-witllering De Rec- respond to these chl\Ts" _hi~ is a goodeumple of the wayGarner archaiam)} ta et Emendata Linguae ALwli- Garner eaUs "widJ splits" and, distinguiahes sound and helpful eae Sc:riptione Diologw ofIS68.) aensibly disco"rago. Hia m:e"all Descriptivist objections from 32 A,syntlletic language uses in- . verdict on s.I, 's_hich is tlIat •••do or dogmatic objeetioDi and . ~. .,. '!'. flecti~DI to dictate syntax. where- ,'. :ti But note that he's •• ne about some are "perfectly proper" and then incorporates tlIe sound ob- . . •.. ,. : u an analytic 1anguar uses word it. Some split infinitive. reJllly some iffy and some juat totally jections into a smarter and mo~ order. latin, German, and Ru.u- are clunky and hard to parse, bad newa, and that no one wide flexible Prescriptivism. ..,.. J" u· ' . "'"'11.' (",... • 11" • ' FOLIO 5.1 . ..'.. . .•. ~ \------~------_ •••• _y...... ,,~.•~ • :''f.,. ~.," ~,.. • · •• >II -0. . .' •• ut :" •. _".01. ., fI ~... .' use depends, of course, on whom you're cial time of it in school. Asnoorlec is a little kid I .\t,.:'~ ..••'•• addressing, More to the point, I submit that the who's wildly,precociously fluent in SWE (he isof- •. , ." : .•• '.11{ •. ~.-, .f dialect you use depends mostly on what sort of ten, recall, the offspring of SNOOTs).Just about 1- ..•• fil" Group your listener is part of and whether you every class has a SNoOTlet, so I'know you've seen wish to present yourself as a fellow member Qf. them-these are the sorts of six- to'twelve-year- '.. , that Group. An obvious example is that tradi- olds who use whom correctly and whose response : .." . tional upper-class English has certain dialectal to striking out in T-ball is to cry out "How incal- • c, 't" • differences from lower-class English and that culably dreadful!" etc. 'The elementary-school ',. : schools used, to have courses in Elocution SNOOTletis one of the earliest identifiable species 'i" I whose whole point was to teach people howto of academic Geekoid and isduly despised by his I speak in an upper-class way. But usage-as-inclu- peers and praised by his teachers. These teachers sian is about much more than class. Here's usually don't see the incredible amounts of pun- another thought experiment: A bunch of U.S. ishment the snoorler is receiving from his class- o. teenagers in clothes that look far too large for mates, or ifthey do see it they blame the classmates ., them are sitting together, in the local mall's and shake their heads sadly at the vicious and ar- Food Court, and a 53-year-old man with a bitrary cruelty of which children are capable. ~ ,Il', combover and clothes that fit, comes over to But the other children's punishment of the, them and says that he wasscoping them and SNOOTlet is not arbitrary at all. There are ~I...•; "'!.. " .' thinks they're totally rad and/or phat and is it important things at stake. Little kids in school • ' •• :Ii cool if he just kicks it and do~s the hang here are learning about Group-inclusion and -exclu- ': . with 'them. The kids' reaction is going to be sion and .about the respective rewards and either scorn or embarrassment for the guy- penalties of same and about the use of dialect "most likely a mix of both. Q:.Why? Or imagine and syntax and slang as signals of affinity and , . <'-;i: that two hard-core urban blacItguys are stand- inclusion.35 They're learning about Discourse ~'> ing there talking and I, who am resoundingly Communities. Kids learn this stuff not in "," •... and in .al] ways white, come up and greet them English or Social Studies but on the play- · with "Yo" and call them "Brothers" and 'ask , ground and at lunch and on the bus. When his ,). ... .'" "s'up, s'goin on," pronouncing on with' that peers are' giving the snoorler rnpnstrpus • • I ' •. tis' NYCish 60-0 diphthong that quadruple Wedgies or holding him down and • Young Urban Black English taking turns spitting on him, there's serious Cum-N-Go deploys for' a standard o. learning going on : .. for everyone except the Either these guys are going to little SNOOT,who in fact is being punished for be offended or they are going precisely his failure to learn. What neither he Q~ikMart to think I am simply out-of my nor his teacher realizes is that the snoorler is mind. No other reaction is deficient in Language Arts, He has only one remotely foreseeable. Q: Why? dialect. He cannot alter his vocabulary, usage, .'t· .•, Why: A dialect of English is learned and used or grammar, 'cannot use slang or vulgarity; and e , ~..•• '. it's these abilities that are really required for ~ ~ either because it's your native vernacular or -, because it's the-dialect of a Group by which you "peer rapport," which is just a fancy .. wish- (with some degree of plausibility) to be Elementary-Ed term for being accepted by the . .~, " ' accepted. And although It is the major and most important Group in the little kid's life. .'."... . arguably the most important one, SWE is only This reviewer acknowledges that there I ., .. one dialect. And it is never, or at least hardly seems to be some, umm, personal stuff getting ••,s.-. .' ever, anybody's ,only dialect. This is because dredged up and worked out here;36 but the ., -I' there are-as you andI both know and yet no s'tuffis relevant. The point is that the little A + .. one in the Usage Wars ever seems to rnention-e- ' SNOOTletis actually in the same dialectal posi- , situations -in which faultlessly correct SWIi is tion as'the class's "slow" kid who can't learn to .~." .. clearly not the appropriate dialect. stop using ain't or bringed. One is punished in ;,' ,.; Childhood is'fullof such situations. This is one .class, the other on the playground, but both -..· .. ' r I·' ,••' reason why SNOOTletstend to have a very hard so- are deficient in the same linguistic skill-s-viz., • til .•..' ~ ~-... about Us and Them, and about how help. the lcids see how to .tart to, membershlp in, U. are not just , ,,' 35 The SNOOTletis, as it happens, an Us alwa,.. needs a Them be- be an U., but the SNOOTlet com- age, station, inability toiatByup plist . an indiapensable part of other cause being not-Them. is essen> plete. the pUDle by providing the 9:00, etc.-thatin fact U. i. pri- , . • lcids' playground education. The tial to being Ua. Because they're a. it •••ere miaaing link: He is the marily a state of mind and a .et ,". lcids are learning that a Group'. lcids and it' •• chool, the obvious Traitor, the U.1l'hb is in fact not of .ensibilitie •. An ideology. '. , .... identity depends as much on ex- Them Is the'teachers and all the U.but Them. "." , ,.' ..•.. 6 In sum, the SNOOTletis teach- 3 (The slcirt-in-achool scenario '. • Ii clusion as induaion. They are, value. and appurtenance. of the o ': •• in other words, starting to Iearn teacher_rid. This teacher-Them ing hi. peers that the criteria for 1l'll8not personal.tuft', FYI,) ..... \.., ,,~ , . .., .•... ' J •• -, •••.••• • I.~ -, ,.. •. .,. 52 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / APRIL 2001 11 ,. '\< .. ,. •·• ••..'.i·,·'..•. ~ ',. -.,':. - •. ~"Iw ~'. 'Iifi... ' •. """ ' t .'. ': ..f.: "... ':~\~.",~ ti'· . ·ft.W the ability to move between various dialects . that, recall, the traditional teacher hasn't given, ••...... and levels of "correctness," the ability to' com- . because he's such a dogmatic SNOOThe sees no municate one way with peers and another way need to), the student isgoing to be reduced to eval- with teachers and another with family and uating the desirabilityof the SWE Group based on another with Little League coaches and so on. the one obvious mem- .Most of these dialectal adjustments are made ber of the Group he's 'Ptuue 'U'aa ~eu ~.' .. below the level of conscious awareness, and encountered, namely our ability to make them seems part psycho- the SNOOTy teacher '1ted~~ logical and part. something else-perhaps himself.: something hardwired into the same mother- I'm not suggesting here that an effective SWE board as Universal Grammar-s-and in truth pedagogy would require teachers to wear sun- •••• this ability is a far better indicator of a kid's glassesand call students "Dude." What, I am sug- It ••• • • "Verbal I.Q." than testscores or grades, since gesting is that the rhetorical situation of an Eng- U.S. English classes do far more to retard lish class-s-a class composed wholly of young dialectal talent than to cultivate it. people whose Group identity is rooted in defiance of Adult-Establishment values; plus also com- ll-knOWn fact: In neither K-12 posed partly of minorities whose primary dialects . nor college English are systematic are different from SWE-requires the teacher to SWE grammar and usage much. come up with overt, honest, compelling argu- taught anymore. It's been this way ments for why SWE is a dialect worth learning. Wfor more than 20 years. The phenomenon drives These arguments are hard: to make-not Prescriptivists nuts, and it's one of the big things intellectually but emotionally, politically. they cite as evidence of America's gradual mur- Because they are baldly elitist.38 The real truth, der of English. Descriptivists and English-Ed of course,' is .that SWE is the dialect 'of the specialists counter that grammar and usage have American elite. That it was invented, codified, been abandoned because scientific research and promulgated, by Privileged WASP Males proved that studying SWE grammar and usage and is perpetuated as "Standard" by same. That .' simply doesn't help make kids better writers. it is the shibboleth of the Establishment and an Each side in the debate tends to regard the other instrument of political power and class division as mentally ill or/and blinded by political ideol- and racial discrimination and all manner. of ogy. Neither camp appears everto have consid- social inequity, These are shall we say rather del- ered whether maybe the way prescriptive SWE isate subjects to bring up in an English class, was traditionally taught had something to do especially in the service of a pro-SWE argu- with its inutility. ment, and extra-especially if you yourself are .Byway here I'm referring not so much to actual both a Privileged WASP Male and the Teacher method as to spirit or attitude. Most traditional and thus pretty much a walking symbol of the teachers of English grammar have, of course, been Adult Establishment. This reviewer's opinion, .dogmatic SNOOTs,and like most dogmatiststhey've though, is that both students and SWE are bet- been incredibly' stupid about the rhetoric they ter served' if the teacher makes his premises used and the Audience they were addressing.s? I explicit and his argument overt, presenting. refer specifically to their assumption that SWE is himself as an advocate of SWE's utility rather the sole appropriate English dialect and that the than as a prophet of its innate superiority. only reasons anyone could fail to see this are ig- Becausethis argument isboth most delicate and norance or amentia or grave deficiencies in char- (I believe) most important with respect to .stu- acter. As rhetoric, this sort of attitude works on- dents of color, here is one version of a spiel I've lyin sermons to the.Choir, and aspedagogyit'sjust given in private conference39 with certain black disastrous. The reality is that an average U.S. stu- students who were (a) bright and inquisitive and dent is going to go to the trouble of mastering (b) deficient in what U.S. higher education con- .the difficult conventions of SWE'only if he sees / siders written English facility: SWE's relevant Group or Discourse Community as one he'd like to be part of.And in the absence I don't know whether anybody'stold you this or , ~...... ,"'" of any sort of argument for why the correct-SWE not, but when you're in a college English class Group is a 'good or desirabie one (an argument you'rebasically studying a foreign dialect. This ..•.•.. ~ , ------.------~~.::.:.:'!./ ~ • 11 . ,.It •. " lipless, tweedy, cancrine-Old dogmatic SNOOT'. pedagogy i. : ~" .. 37 There are still some' of these 38 (Or rather the arguments re- · .. •... ~ Maids of both genders. Hyouhiod merely elitiam in aetion.) . '- ,".. teachers around, at least here in quire UI openly to aclmowledge . one (as I did, 1976-'77), you sure- the Midwest. You Imow the type, and talk about elitism, whereas a "., -.~' ..• - ly remember him. 39 (I'm not a total idiot.) . ,.~:.:.,~.•' . .~ .. ~ . .,\.~ " ~. · ... ~.. , ~-!f' ~f1•.#..l , 1#" • FOLIO 53 • •••.• 0.:. ••• '. . ... • • 4 • •••• II. .. .;. dialect is called Standard Written English. [Brief in SWE,.,bec~use SWE is the dialect our country . .• "", ':~ ,,':& overview of major U.S. dialects a la p. 50.] From uses to talk to itself. African' Americans who've' talking with you and reading your essays, I've con- become successful and important in U.S. culture , ~ /If •. ••• cluded that your own primary dialect is [one of know this; that's why King's and X's and Jackson's' 1•••• three variants of SBE common to our region]. Now, speeches are in SWE, and why Morrison's and let me spell something out in my official Teacher- Angelou's and Baldwin's and Wideman's and West's voice: The' SBE you're fluent in is different from , books are full of totally ass-kicking SWE, and why .C'. ~ SWE in all kinds of important ways. Some of these black judges and politicians and journalists and differences are gramrnatical-c-for example, double doctors and teachers communicate professionally in negatives are OK in Standard Black English but SWE. Some of these people grew.up in homes and not in SWE, and SBE and SWE conjugate certain .cornmunities where SWE was the native dialect, verbs in totally different ways. Other diff~rences and these black people had it much easier in school, have more to do with style-for instance, Standard but the ones who didn't grow up with SWE realized Written English tends to use a lot more subordi- at some point that they had to learn it and become nate clauses in the early parts of sentences, and it able to write in it, and so they did. And [INSERT sets off most of these early subordinates with com- NAME HERE], you're going to .learn to use it, too, mas, and, under SWE rules, writing that doesn't do because I am going to make you. this is "choppy" There are tons of differences like that. How much of this stuff do you already know? I should note here that a couple of the stu- [STANDARD RESPONSE: some variation on "I know dents I've said this stuff to were offended-one from the grades and comments on my papers that lodged an Official Complaint-and thad have English profs don't think I'm a good writer."] Well, had more than one 'colleague profess to find my I've got good news and bad news. There are some spiel "racially insensitive." Perhaps you do, too. .• otherwise smart English My own humble opinion is that some of the cul- .~'" ""~" .. "'( profs who aren't very. .~1t NVW :f~~ tural and political realities of American life are '.' .•. - aware that there' are real YVti~ t~]ElE -... 54 HARPER'S MAGAZI,NE I APRIL 2001 ~------j ..: . ' • '. :.•. • criticism of PCE seems to consist in making words, PCE functions as a form of censorship, • , ,·'. , fun of its trendiness or vapidity, This review-. and censorship always serves the status quo.) s, k.: · . er's own opinion is that prescriptive PCE is not As a practical matter, I strongly doubt whether '! ~ . just silly but confused and dangerous. a guy who has four small kids and makes $12,000 '~ Usage is alwayspolitical, of course, but it'scom- a year feels more empowered or less ill-used by a ..• , plexly political. With respect, for instance, to po- society that carefully refers to him as "economi- , .• litical change, usage conventions can function callydisadvantaged"rather than "poor."Were I he, , . in two ways:'On the one hand they can be a re- in fact, I'd probably find the PCE term insult- •.. flection' of political change, and on the other they ing-not just because it's patronizing but because •• co" can be an instrument ofpolitical change. These two it's hypocritical and self-serving.Like many forms • " ," functions are different and have to be kept straight. of Vogue'Usage.v' PeE functions primarily to sig- ••• • Confusing them-in particular, mistaking for po- , nal and congratulate certain virtues in the speak- '. • litical efficacy what is really just a language's po- er-scrupulous' egalitarianism,con- •. litical symbolism--enables the bizarreconviction cern for the dignity of all people, . CLCJSUFtE that America ceases to be elitist or unfair simply sophistication about the political because Americans stop using certain vocabulary implications of language-s-and so serves the self- that ishistorically associated with elitism and un- ish interests of the PC far more than it serves any fairness, This is PCE's central fallacy-that a so- of the person'sor groups renamed. ciety's mode of expression is productive of its at- .....',. titudes rather than. a product of those INTERPOLATION ON A RELATED ISSUE IN , .. 'attitudes-and of course it's nothing but the ob- THE FACE OF WHOSE GHASTLY MALIGNANCY ' •.••"0 . , verse of the politically conservative SNOOT'sdelu- THIS REVIEWER'S DEMOCRATIC SPIRIT JUST 1 " '.,. '"•.. ~I"\ sion that social change can be retarded by re- GIVES oUT ALTOGETHER, ADMITTEDLY , ... stricting change in standard usage.s? . ~ •• 6. .• Forget Stalinization or Logic lO1-level -This issue is Academic English, a cancer that •• •• equivocations, though. There's a grosser irony has metastasized now to afflict both scholarly •. about Politically Correct English, This is that writing- ... PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive .. reform but is in fact-in its Orwellian substitu- If such a subLimecyborg wouLdinsinuate the future •• .e .. tion of the euphemisms of social equality fOl; as post-Fordist subject, his palpably masochistic Lo- - .. ' social equality itself---of vastly more help to cations' as ecstatic agent of the sublime superstate •41 conservatives and the u.s. status quo than tra- need to be decoded as the "now all-but-unreadable ditional SNOOTprescriptions ever were. Were I, DNA" of the fast industrializing Detroit, just as his .,'.. Robocop-like strategy of carceraL negotiation and for instance, a political conservative who street controL remains the tirelessly American one " .. opposed taxation as a. means of redistributing of inflicting regeneration through violence upon. national wealth, I would be delighted to watch the raciaLLyheterogLassic wilds and others of the' PCE progressives spend their time and energy inner city.42 . .t· arguing over whether a poor person should be · . described .as "low-income" or "economically -and prose as mainstream as The Village disadvantaged" or "pre-prosperous" rather than Voice's;· constructing effective public arguments for redistributive legislation or higher marginal tax At first encounter, the poems' distanced cerebral rates on corporations. (Not to' mention that surfaces can be daunting, evading physical location or straightforward emotionaL arc. But this seeming strict codes of egalitarian euphemism serve to " remoteness quickly reveals a very real passion, cen- '. -; >. burke the sorts of painful, unpretty, and some- tered in the speaker's struggle to define his evolving times offensive discourse that in a pluralistic self-construction. democracy leads to actual' political change ,e rather than symbolic political change. In other Maybe it's a combination of my sxoortrude • I , little more than list VW'. that bug transmission of raw info, the oth. and that's why even I!-onSNOOTs 4-0 E.!" this is the reaaoningbe- him and say that "vogue words ha.e er the transmiasion of certain stuff often find Vogue Uug<' irritating hind many Pop Prescriptivisu' such a grip on the popular mind about the speal:er-,nd Vogu'e and creepy. , complaint that ohoddy uaar sig- that they come to be used in con- U~ throws this balance off, Gar- nifies the Decline of Western Civ- tens in which they serVe little pur- ner's "serve little purpose" is ex- 4~ FYI, this passage, which appears ilization. PO"'" " This is one of the rai-e places actly incorrect; vogue words serve in ADMAU's entry on OBSCURI- inADMAUwhere Garner is sim- too m';ch the purpose ofpresen~ 'rr, is quoted from a 1997 Sacra- 4-1A DietioruzroiModernAmer- ply wrong. The. real problem i. the speaker in a certain light (even mento Bee article entitled "No iean Usage includes a mini...... ,. on that every .entenc~ blends and if this is merely as with-it or hip), Contest: English PrOfesso~. Are VOGUE WORDS, but it's a disap- balances at least twodiff~t com- and people's subliminal B.S.- Worst Writers on Campus." :pointing on~ in,that Garner does municative functions-one the antennae pick this imbalance up, FOLIO 55. ." ~...;-.....~...'- and the fact that I end up having to read a lot tivism or Image Over Substance or the ubiquity ~ .~ •••• AI "of it for my job, but I'm afraid I regard of advertising' and P.R. or the rise of Identity .•... ' : " f Academic English not as a dialectal variation • Politics or whatever you will-c-we live in an era • •• • but as a grotesque debasement of SWE, and: of terrible preoccupation with presentation and I 1~;'4iI" . loathe it even more than the stilted incoher- . " interpretation. In rhetorical terms, certain '.. ences of Presidential English ("This is the best long-held distinctions between the Ethical .••.• -J and only way to uncover, destroy, and prevent Appeal, Logical Appeal (= an argument's plau- . ',Iraq from reengineering . weapons of mass sibility or soundness), and Pathetic Appeal , ',J'. .•. destruction") or the mangled pieties of (= all argument's emotional impact) have now BusinessSpeak ("Our Mission: to proactively pretty much collapsed-or rather the different search and provide 'the optimum networking sorts of Appeals now affect and are affected by skills and resources to meet the needs of your one another in ways that make it almostimpos- growing business"); and in support of this utter sible to advance an argument on "reason" contempt and intolerance I cite no less an alone. authority than Mr. G. Orwell, who 50 years ago A vividly concrete rillustration here' con" , had AE pegged as a ~'mixture of vagueness and cerns. the Official Complainta blackunder- sheer, incompetence" in: ' graduate filed against this ~' which "it is normal to come' ..A,"'.- ..•41.., ,., / - ~'A rev. after 'one of my little in , .,. ' "•.....'~.~ across long passages which n I~ I~ ~ camera spiels described on . .'..•. 'to, are 'almost completely lack- ,..AU '141'A t:)f~u~.1 pages ,53-54. The com- ing in meaning."43 nl -/:",~ ~ .'~, plainant was (lapine) ....• - x/ . '. It probably isn't the whole wrong, but she was not crazy .'IIi '. ~ ' .•. ,.,,'" explanation, but, as with the voguish hypocrisy or stupid; and I was able later to see that I did of ,PCE, the obscurity and pretension of bear someresponsibility for the whole nasty Academic English can be attributed in part to a administrative swivet. My culpability lay in .....• •. ". disruption in the delicate rhetorical' balance gross rhetorical naivete, I'd seen my speech's .' between language as a vector of meaning and primary 'Appeal as Logical: The aim was to '. ).' fII " language as a vector of the writer's own-resume. make a conspicuously blunt, honest argument •. ' ... In other words, it is when a scholar's for SWE's utility. It wasn't pretty, maybe, but it .'!i ~ • vanity/insecurity leads him to write primarily to was true, plus so manifestly bullshit-free that I communicate and reinforce his own status as an think I anticipated not just acquiescence but Intellectual that his English is deformed by gratitude for my candor.v- The' problem I " pleonasm and pretentious diction (whose func- failed to see, of course, lay not with the argu- " tion is to signal the writer's erudition) and by ment per se but with the person making it- opaque abstraction (whose function is to keep .namely me, a Privileged WA,SP Male in a,posi- , anybody from pinning the writer down to a def- tion of power, thus someone whose statements .-t ",' inite assertionthat can maybe be refuted or , about the primacy and utility of the Privileged II' .~~ ~ •• ' shown to be, silly). The latter characteristic, a WASP, Male dialect appeared not candid/hor- ' . level of obscurity that often makes it just about _ tatory /authoritative/ true but elitist/high- .. impossible to figure out what an AE sentence' is handed/authoritarian/racist. Rhetoric-wise, '.•...~, -' really saying, so closely resembles political and what happened was that I allowed the sub- .."",., corporate doublespeak ("revenue enhance- stance and style of my Logical Appeal to corn- ment," "downsizing," "pre-owned," "proactive pletely torpedo my Ethical Appeal: What the resource-allocation restructuring") that it's student heard was just another PWM rational- tempting to think AE's real purpose is conceal- izing why his Group and his English were top ment and its real motivation fear. .. dog and, ought "logically" to stay that' way ". ,. The insecurity that drives AE, PCE, and (plus, worse, trying to use his academic power .. ...• . vocab-tape ads is far from groundless, though. over her to coerce her assent45). it' •• ' .; These aretense linguistic times. Blame it on If for any reason you-happen to find yourself . . .-. 41 r _..•... Heisenbergian Uncertainty or postmodem rela- sharing this particular student's perceptions and " '''.1 • , saw under the sun that the race pacity, but that a considerable el- 43 This was in hi. ~946 "Politics 45 (She professed to have been is not to the swift' in Ecclesiaste • ement of the unpeedieeable must ".• and the English Language," an especially traumatized by the cli- as "Objective considerations of invariably be ~en into account" essay that despite its date (and its mactic "I am going to JDa! 56 HAjtPER'S MAGAZINE / APRIL 2001 •. .:* .11 .•.~.. • reaction,46 I would ask that you bracket your nunciation entry on trough.47 In other words, ., ..., feelings long enough to recognize that the a SNOOTis going to be able to find stuff to j:.'•• t.·,.r.., ..• PWM, instructor's very modem rhetorical quibble about in any usage dictionary, and . . ADMAU is no exception. dilemma in that office was really no different ....· - •... from the dilemma faced byamale who makes a' But 'it's still really, r~ally good-and not just I. •. Pro-Life argument, or an atheist who argues lexicographically' but rhetorically, politically (if .. , against Creation Science, or a Caucasian who. it even makes sense to distinguish these any • opposes Affirmative Action,' or. an African more). As a collection of judgments, ADMAU " .' , fl- American who decries Racial Profiling, or any- is in no way Descriptivist, but Gariler structures .•• one over eighteen who tries to make a case for his judgments very carefully to av~id-the elitism • - • e raising the legal driving age to eighteen, etc, and anality of traditional SNOOTitude.H~ does •• 'It, -, The dilemma has nothing to dowlthwhether not deploy irony or scorn or caustic wit, nor .. • the arguments themselves are plausible or right tropes or colloquialisms or contractions ... or •..., .( really any sort of verbal style at all. In fact; even or even sane, because the debate rarely gets that ••••••. . far-any opponent with sufficiently strong feel- though Gamer talks openly about himself and .... 'ings or a dogmatic bent candiscredit the argu- uses the I-S pronoun throughout the whole die- ·'I.-. .. •.• ments and pretty much foreclose all further\ dis- rionary, his personality is oddly.effaced, neutral- • .".,' lifo ... . cussion with a single, terribly familiar rejoinder: ized. It's like he's so bland he's barely there. Eg., "Of course you'd say that"; "Easy for you to say"; as this reviewer was finishing the book's final - ...•' ~...' "What right do yol.{ have ... I" entry,48 it,struck me that I had no idea whether t •• ..-" Now (still bracketing) consider the situation Bryan' Gamer was black' or' white, gay or ."..... , of any reasonably intelligent and well-meaning straight, ,Democrat or Dittohead .. What was ,.· -:.. ' ".',.,: SNOOTwho sits down, to prepare a prescriptive even more striking was that I hadn't once won- .. ... ;"· .•. "', -usage guide. It's the millennium,post- dered about any of this up to now; something ..•..... Everything: Whence the authority to make any about Gamer's lexical persona kept me ever •. '. sort of credible Appeal for SWE at all? from asking where the guy'was coming from or .. what particular agendas'. or ideologies were ..•. '. informing what he had admitted right up front ARTI OLE'S OR UX: , 'tt .•• WHY BRYAN A. GARNER were "value judgments." .. , . Bryan Gamer is a genius because A ' IS A GENIUS, THOUGH OF A' .••••••..., I Dictionary of Mo~m American Usage pretty RATHER PARTICULAR KIND· much resolves the Usage Wars' Crisis of .· .' Authority. Gamer manages to control the ••• •• '/I' , ' t isn't that A Dictionary of Modern compresence ofrhetorical Appeals so cleverly · . "1American Usage is perfect. It doesn't' that he appears able to transcend both Osage .." . . seem to cover conversan~in vs. conversant Wars camps and simply tell the truth, and in a with, for example, or abstruse vs. obtuse, way that does not. torpedo his own credibility .1'" •••. or to have' anything on hereby and herewith but actually enhances it. His argumentative (which I tend to use interchangeably but strategy is totally brilliant and totally sneaky, . '~ , · ~ .- .".'. always have the uneasy feeling I'm screwing .and 'part of both qualities is that it usually .. ..•....•. ••• .' ~ P' ••••• 1 up). Gamer's got a good discussion of used to doesn't seem like there's even an argument . but nothing on supposed to. Nor does he give going on at all. . . any examples to help explain irregular partici- Garner recognizes something that neither of '-;-;, " ',,: ples and transitivity ("The light.shone" vs. "I the dogmatic camps appears to get: Given 40 ...••• 'iIlI,· • . .. shined the light," etc.), and these would seem years' of the Usage Wars, "authority" is no . to be more important than, say, the correct longer something a lexicographer can just pre- • spelling of huzzah or the plural of animalculum, sume ex officio.'In fact, a large part of the proj- G both of which get discussed. Plus there's the ect of any contemporary usage dictionary will . VOGUEWORDSsnafu and the absence of a pro- consist in establishing this. authority. If that and it emerged that I have some- understandable that Garner him- +6 (The Dept. head and Dean did +7 To be honest, I notic~ this hoY all my life misheard trougIJ selfhad a good-natured enay on not, U it happena, share her re- omiaaion only because midwaJ' as ending with a tb instead of it, but no such lud, which in fair- action ••.thoup. it would be disin- through working on this artide an fand thus have publicly mis- genuoUi not to tell you that they I happened to use the word troup. ne •• I don't suppose I can .really pronounced it God knows how blame {ltarner for. happened aBo to be PWM'a.which in front of the same SNOOT friend • many sc6res of timea. and I all fact did not go unrellllU'ked by the who likes to compare public Eng- but burned rubber getting home 48 (on mebac:lva. zweibadr) complainant, such that the whole lish to nolin-hammering. and to see whether perhaps the error 'proceediDg got pretty darn tense, he fell sideways out of his chair, was 10 common and hum.an and indeed, before it •••••all OYerj) ,. '. :: FOLIO 57 ~ ..-- ~•...... - " "seems rather obvious, be 'apprised that nobody rhetoricf I, in the traditional sense. That is, they before Gamer seems to have figured it out-s-that wantto US~ the languagedeftly so that it's fit for the lexicographer's challenge now is to be not their purposes. ' just accurate and comprehensive but credible. . It's now possible' tosee that all the autobio- That in the absence of unquestioned Authority graphical stuff in ADMAU's Preface does more in language, the read~r must now be moved or than justhurnanize Mr. Bryan A Garner: It als,6 persuaded to grant a dictionary its authority, serves to detail the early and enduring passion freely and for what appear to be good reasons, ,that helps make someone, a credible techno- Gamer's A Dictionary of Modern American crat-we tend 'to like and trust experts whose. Usage is thus both a collection of information expertise is both of a real love for their special- and a piece of Democratic rhetoric.49 Its goal is ty instead of ju~t a desire to be expert at s9m~- . to recast the Prescriptivist's persona: The author ;' thing, In fact, it' turns out that ADMAU s presents himself as an authority not in an auto- Preface quietly and steadily invests Garner with cratic sense-but in a .technocratic sense, And the every single qualification of modern techno-.: technocrat is not only a thoroughly modern and cratic Authority: passionate devotion; reason, palatabie,image of Authority but also immune to ' , and accountability (recall "in: the interests the charges Ofelitism/classismthat have hobbled of full disclosure, here are the ten critical traditional Prescriptivism, points. :,."), experience ("th~t, after years ,?f Of course, Garner really is a technocrat. He's working, on usage problems, I ve settled on ), a lawyer, recall, and, in ADMAU he conseiously exhaustive and tech-savvy research ("For con-- projects a sort of wise juridicalpersona: knowl- temporary usage, the .files of 0l\r greatest dictio- edgeable; dispassionate, fair, with an almost En- .nary makers pale in .comparison with the full- lightenment-grade passion for reason, His judg- . text search capabilities now provided by NEXIS ments about usage tend to be rendered like legal and WES1LAW"), an even-and judicious tempera- .- opinions-exhaustive citation of ment (see e.g. this from HYPERCORRECfION: precedent (other dictionaries' judg- on accident "Sometimes people strive to .abide QY the ments, published.examples of actual strictest 'etiquette, but in the,' process behave' usage) c~mbined with clear, logical reas(;ming inappropriately'fi"), and the sort of humble that's always informed by the larger consensual ,j . integrity (for instance, including inon~ of the purposes SWE is meant to serve. ,. entries a past published usage-error of his own) ,Also thoroughgoit;lgly. technocratIC IS that not only renders Garner likable but trans- Garner's approach to the issue of whether any- mits the same,kind of reverence for English that body's even going to be interested in his ~OO good jurists ha~e for the law, both of which are pages of fine-pointed counsel.' Like any spec.ml-. bigger and more important than any one perso~. ,ist, he simply presumes that there are practical Probably the most attractive thing' about reasons why some people choose to cor:cern ADMAU's Ethical Appeal, though, is Garner's themselves with SWE usage; and his attitude .;about the fact that most Americans "could care scrupulous consideration' of the reader's con- cern about his (or her) ownlinguisti<; authority less" isn't scorn or disapproval but the phleg- and rhetorical persona and ability to convince' , matic resignation of, a doctor or. lawyer who an Audience that he cares.' Again. and again, realizes that he can give good advice but can't Garner frames his prescriptions in rhetorical make you take it: terms, e.g.: "To the writer or speaker for whom The reality Icare about most'is that somepeople credibility is important, it's a good idea to still want to use the languagewell.SO They want avoid distracting any readers or listeners." A to' write effectively;they want to speakeffective- Dictionary of Modem American Usage's real the- ly. They' want their' language to be graceful at sis, in other words, is that the purposes of the times.and powerfulat times. They want to under- .stand how to use wordswell, how to manipulate expert authority and the purposes of the lay sentences, aitd how to 'move about in the lan- reader are identical, and identically rhetori- guagewithout seeming td.flail, They .wantgood cal~, which I submit is 'about as Democratic grammar, ,but they want more: they want. these days as you're going to get. •• 4,9 (mean4>g literally Qemocra- most remarkable thing a~ut this 52 (Here this reviewer's indwelling kind of plausible complement sentence is that coming from Gar;- .• and ever-vigilant SNO tenc.e, of course I are what the . in'this sentence, since what fol- ural and hulthy and, when you ·51 Did you think I was kidding? , Usage Wars are abol1l>-'whose"lan- lows the conjunction is nei~er 'come right down to it, kind of guage" and whose ·well~? The an independent clause nor any fun.) . 58 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I APRIL 2001