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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37167 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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I think prescriptivism is of vital importance, because without it language is completely incoherent. I find linguistic descriptivism to be rather vapid, actually - all you can really say as a descriptivist is "that person sure is using word X to mean Y". You can't actually say whether it is correct or incorrect. I would much rather have an effort (imperfect though it is) to at least try to say "this usage is the correct one" so we can actually communicate with each other.

I also think it's interesting that you mentioned postmodernism, because sometimes linguistic descriptivists feel like they are engaging in serious motte and bailey arguments. And of course, Scott Alexander's original essay talking about motte and bailey arguments focused on the rather bad faith arguments you sometimes see used to defend postmodernism. So I think there's definitely something to the parallel you are noticing.

I will say, in fairness, that language does change over time and at some point you need to accept it. But at the same time, I think you can take that too far, and it usually is taken too far. Some people are just plain ignorant, and they speak/write the language poorly. There's absolutely nothing wrong with acknowledging that and refusing to lower one's standards.

I think prescriptivism is of vital importance, because without it language is completely incoherent. I find linguistic descriptivism to be rather vapid, actually - all you can really say as a descriptivist is "that person sure is using word X to mean Y". You can't actually say whether it is correct or incorrect.

You can say whether it's correct or incorrect, it's just that "correct" means "consistent with language norms of a particular time and place" rather than "consistent with the eternal unchanging Platonic ideal of English".

Regarding your last paragraph, I'm a fan of expanding Scott's principle of Give Up 70% of the Way Through the Hyperstitious Slur Cascade to all questions of controversial linguistic change.

For relatively uncontroversial issues, like a new technology you can "give up" and accept the new terminology at 1% adoption rate, but when it comes to considering something a slur or a faux pas, I think people waiting until 70% of people feel that way is a good rule of thumb.

If a large group of people act on this principle, it has the desired function of keeping language relatively stable.

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