site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37170 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

  1. Redundancy: Axe already has a meaning. It's primarily a noun, a tool/weapon that chops things. It's only a verb when you mean hitting something with an axe, in which case it's very much not very friendly to axe someone. Any language change that overlaps other meanings receives a penalty. I suppose the contraction "it's" overlaps the possessive "its", and being able to tell the difference matters: it will almost always be clear whether you meant to ask something or hit someone with an axe, so this isn't a huge point against it, but it is a point.

  2. Efficiency. "It's" is faster and easier to say than "it is". I very highly doubt that the legacy is actually people hearing, remembering, and pronouncing "it is" wrong, so much as being lazy and pronouncing it quickly. People who are entirely aware of what "it is" means might choose to say "it's" to save time. Meanwhile, "Axe" and "Ask" are approximately the same length to speak or write, and I think "axe" actually takes slightly more time/effort in the middle of a sentence because it doesn't flow as well. Nobody would ever use "axe" on purpose unless it's to fit in with other people who already do it by mistake.

  3. Momentum. I am not an etymologist, I don't know exactly when/why/how "it's" became a thing, but by this point it is clearly established, while "axe" is not. Maybe it was a mistake at the time when "it's" became a thing and if people had resisted it then we could have less ambiguity about "its" (and might be allowed to use an apostrophe like we do with every other possessive). I'm not sure. But at this point it has been established and people understand it and use it. The primary purpose of language is to communicate with each other, consensus is incredibly useful in that regard, so all changes are immediately suspect and need to have positive reasons to justify themselves. If the majority of people said "axe" and some people started saying "ask" instead, I would oppose that on the same grounds.

Obnoxious pedantry: In fact "axe" can be used as a verb in another context, when it is used figuratively to mean "to eliminate, remove, or cancel" something (or someone).

Obviously this affects your point not at all.

Aks predates ask; it's the form preferred by Chaucer and the author of Beowulf. Ask is a modern degeneration enforced by London statists in their government building exercise. An unsavory task (or, more appropriately, tax).

This is the type of ridiculous and irrelevant retort beloved of the kind of progressive critic who points out that evidence that a handful of black people might occasionally have graced Elizabethan London with their presence means that a depiction that uses the city’s modern demographics is in fact entirely historically accurate.

Lest this dissolve into another generic debate about Lyotardian postmodernism and grand narrative, I think everyone who believes that “axe” sounds ugly and wrong and that people who say it should be corrected agrees that this sentiment is unfounded on any fundamental laws of the universe. I simply prefer it, and I believe that the state, society and institutions should enforce my will and my preferences upon everyone else. Does that satisfy you?

In 10 years, suppose proper SAE (which descriptively is the prestige dialect used by the American college educated class) has managed to extirpate archaic forms like "mom" and "mother" in favor of the correct "birthing person." They remain in use among some holdouts insisting on speaking CAVE (conservative American vernacular English), but state, society, and institutions all vigorously police its use and shut out CAVE people from positions of power. What's a prescriptivist to do, once that has become the prestige dialect? Shrug their shoulders and get on with the times?

What's a prescriptivist to do, once that has become the prestige dialect? Shrug their shoulders and get on with the times?

Obviously there will be prescriptivists on both sides -- the fact that institutions are vigorously policing its use demonstrates there are prescriptivists on the novo-SAE side. The issue is to be decided by the axe. Though the fact that the new thing is "SAE" indicates that in your scenario it already has been.

While I don't know the history of "ask" vs "aks", I do also tend to find a lot of stuff like this in descriptive linguistic spaces, which is something that annoys me that I did not include in my original post.
Often when I see someone committing a prescriptive faux pas by questioning certain misuses of language, I see many people rush in to tell that person they're wrong.

Don't you know that use of the singular "they" in English is correct and ancient? Shakespeare used to use the singular "they". The same goes for use of "literally" as an emphasis. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.

I'm not personally equipped to argue back at these people, because I don't know enough of linguistic history, but something just feels like it could be wrong, like they may be misrepresenting history. But I have no way of knowing.
Maybe it was used, but was it "proper"? Must we defend any language simply because it was used at some point in history?

The singular they where gender is genuinely unknown is legitimately old, in the sense of predating middle English(IIRC it comes from old Norse which used neuter for referents with unknown gender), and opposing it is actually a neologism attempting to bring English in line with continental languages which use a generic he.

Using it to refer to persons whose gender can be reasonably implied(the father took their son to the matinee) is as stupid as any other gender ideology neologism.

The singular “they” is often used in a particularly annoying motte-and-bailey fallacy.

Motte: The singular “they” has been used for thousands of years! Shakespeare used it! [Used it—but in the context of an unknown person or unspecified person, as in “Someone left their bag here”]

Bailey: Let’s use the singular “they” to refer to specific, named people! (E.g. “When I asked Jamie what they were doing this evening, they said that they were going to the protest”)

And none of that changes that it is bad English to say "axe a question". The people who say that aren't appealing to some older tradition, they are ignorant and speaking the language poorly.

They aren't ignorant: they know that SAE has you say ask instead of axe. Otherwise, they wouldn't axe someone who used ask: "why you speaking white?" And people can and do regularly code switch depending on their audience.

Vernaculars are used as a way to indicate tribal membership. Going out of your way to use a vernacular mismatched with your audience is always going to raise eyebrows.

Let's keep in mind here that the claim is that it's incorrect to say "axe" instead of "ask". Reasons that boil down to "I don't like it" don't make it correct, because clearly there are people who like it.

Redundancy: Axe already has a meaning.

Homophones are not incorrect. There are about a billion of them in English.

I suppose the contraction "it's" overlaps the possessive "its", and being able to tell the difference matters: it will almost always be clear whether you meant to ask something or hit someone with an axe, so this isn't a huge point against it, but it is a point.

Looks like it's a tie game for it's vs axe so far.

I very highly doubt that the legacy is actually people hearing, remembering, and pronouncing "it is" wrong, so much as being lazy and pronouncing it quickly.

As far as I can tell, "'it's' is lazy but 'axe' is ignorant" is purely mood affiliation on your part. Not to mention I don't see why laziness is a more pardonable sin than ignorance, if we're going to keep a ledger.

People who are entirely aware of what "it is" means might choose to say "it's" to save time. Meanwhile, "Axe" and "Ask" are approximately the same length to speak or write, and I think "axe" actually takes slightly more time/effort in the middle of a sentence because it doesn't flow as well.

Your opinion on how well it flows doesn't make it incorrect, unless you're willing to bite the bullet and acknowledge that "flat" is more correct than "apartment".

Nobody would ever use "axe" on purpose unless it's to fit in with other people who already do it by mistake.

That it's a mistake is what you are trying to prove, so you can't assume it in order to prove it. Yes, 'axe' is used among people who speak Ebonics - there are words unique to every dialect, that doesn't make them wrong.

Momentum. I am not an etymologist, I don't know exactly when/why/how "it's" became a thing, but by this point it is clearly established, while "axe" is not.

Ironically, 'ax' is about as old as 'ask' (see Chaucer 'Yow loveres axe I now this questioun.'). In old English the word for 'ask' was both 'acsian' and 'ascian'.

To pile on the irony even higher, you are essentially making an appeal from descriptivism. "It's wrong because people don't say it" well yes, it's wrong in standard English, it's not wrong in every dialect because there are dialects where it is, in fact, firmly established.

There are a class of cellular automata which follow some form of the rule "look at what your neighbors are doing, then copy the state that is most common among them". There are variations of this: sometimes the copying is probabilistic rather than deterministic so the most common is simply the most likely to be copied. If you attach some game theory or other fitness function you can get an evolutionary system where higher scoring traits are more likely to be copied and you can watch natural selection play out across the model.

What these tend to have in common is that under a broad range of parameters they eventually result in consensus. Even if all of the initial strategies are completely arbitrary, just numbered differently, you still by random chance have one of them end up more prevalent and then it snowballs out of control until it is universal or near-universal.

In the case of language, that would be useful. My point is not that the oldest form of language is the most correct. My point is more that the most common use is the most useful, unless some objective concern such as use efficiency or uniqueness can overcome that. Having minor dialectic enclaves within a language are burdensome and confusing. Therefore, the burden is on all new changes to prove themselves worthy of the cost of breaking consensus. If I lived in Chaucer's time and everyone said "axe", if that was just what that word meant, I would likewise oppose changing it to "ask" for no reason. But if 95% of people say "ask" and 5% of people say "axe" then, unless they've got a really good reason, it is useful to pressure them to conform and bring the language back together instead of splintering it, or trying to convert the remaining 95% their way.

The point is that you are not bringing the language back together - this is a form of the word that goes back to old English. There have always and will always be variation in language and dialects.

The idea that we'll bring the language back together and everyone will speak the same way is a total pipe dream that has never occurred in the history of human civilization since the tower fell.

I am not even arguing against the claim that 'axe' is not correct in SAE. But pronouncing it as universally incorrect or due to ignorance simply has no bearing on reality. It doesn't become incorrect just because it's dialect.

The point is that you are not bringing the language back together - this is a form of the word that goes back to old English.

Did the American Africans inherit it from the lineage, or is it the case of independent invention? If it is the latter, the fact that some Anglos a millenium ago used is irrelevant.

The idea that we'll bring the language back together and everyone will speak the same way is a total pipe dream that has never occurred in the history of human civilization.

All or nothing fallacy. No two people "speak the same way", preferences in style differ, in phrasing, but languages as things common to a group still exist. The current distance between normal English and African American English isn't an edict of nature, it can be reduced.

Many nation building projects included picking one language among many and teaching it to the people of the entire country: France, Italy, Poland... There are still dialects, but the diversity of language in each of these countries has been reduced in comparison to the state before standardization.

The current distance between normal English and African American English isn't an edict of nature, it can be reduced.

None of this is an edict of nature. That's the whole point, and why there isn't one universally correct set of rules.

The statist perspective here is simply wrong. We're talking about a dialect that is already low status in society - you can't regularize it any more by edict because we are already living in that world. The people who speak BVE simply don't care about your approval (although obviously many of them can switch to SAE when they need to).

Many nation building projects included picking one language among many and teaching it to the people of the entire country: France, Italy, Poland... There are still dialects, but the diversity of language in each of these countries has been reduced in comparison to the state before standardization.

And in Germany to this day there are extreme regional differences, even when comparing the vernacular in nearby cities like Dusseldorf and Cologne. Sure, everyone speaks High German too, but just about everyone in the US speaks SAE as well.

I'm glad you brought up Italy because they actually have a hodgepodge of local languages infinitely more bewildering than someone 'axing' you a question. You can't make people completely sever their connection to the language that they heard from their family and parents growing up, even if the high modernist government doesn't speak it.

That's the whole point, and why there isn't one universally correct set of rules.

There is correct English just as there is correct Python or correct French. American Africans (and their "wigger" admirers) who deviate from this ideal are wrong only in so far they claim the language the speak is English.

We're talking about a dialect that is already low status in society

Is it low status? If I mock Ebonics will the elites laugh with me, or pillory me? Because in a country where non-standard dialects really are looked down upon, even far-leftist politicians openly mock them.

you can't regularize it any more by edict because we are already living in that world.

If we lived in a world in which a student speaking correct Ebonics (but wrong English) the teacher would mock them, and would be given 0 points if they answered thusly, I would agree. But today's teachers in America tolerate Ebonics even when it is presented as English.

The people who speak BVE

Do you mean AAVE?

simply don't care about your approval

If they didn't care about approval, in the case of the "lawyer dawg", the Ebonics native speaker would have said it was his insufficient grasp of English that cost him an attorney, and wouldn't have appealed.

I'm glad you brought up Italy because they actually have a hodgepodge of local languages infinitely more bewildering than someone 'axing' you a question.

And if you went to the era before unification of Italy the distance between languages spoken on Italian peninsula would have been even greater. My point wasn't every Italian speaks the same language (I even mentioned that no two people do), but that state intervention can reduce the differences.

There is correct English just as there is correct Python or correct French.

There is no academy of the English language.

There is correct English just as there is correct Python

Which Python version is the correct one?

2.7 obvs

There is correct English just as there is correct Python or correct French.

The comparison to Python is useful. One big project in NLP back in the day was defining a formal grammar for English, analogous to one for a programming language. Countless careers were spent on this paradigm.

That project failed, spectacularly. Human language empirically doesn't follow a formal grammar. All it is is a dense, giant mass of statistical correlations that agents pick up through positive reenforcement through interactions with other agents. Try writing a grammar of English in a couple of megabytes of ANTLR files, and you are doomed to fail.

Of course, you can train some classification model on some subset of English data labeled as proper and the rest improper. But you'll find that the stricter you make it, the more you'll find good and even great English rejected.

There is correct English

Ah, maybe you can clear that up for me. Is the correct English SAE? Or is it British English (RP? Midlands pronunciation? East Anglian?)? Or Scottish English? Or Australian English? Which one is the one true English?

If I mock Ebonics will the elites laugh with me, or pillory me?

Do a few job interviews in Ebonics and see how many offers you get.

My point wasn't every Italian speaks the same language (I even mentioned that no two people do), but that state intervention can reduce the differences.

Indeed, and the differences are already highly reduced. We're litigating 'ask' vs 'aks' in this thread. Try talking to a Sicilian in Ligurian and tell me which difference is larger.

Going with your cellular automata analogy, you're missing that people don't have knowledge of the global landscape, only their local neighborhood. If everyone around you says aks, shouldn't you then also say aks?

With most language, historically it's been characterized by something closer to genetic drift than driven by anything like a fitness function (there are some universal trends: language traits that compress too much information or too little are both disfavored). Homogeneity has real benefits, but it also takes energy to create and maintain. Control isn't free.

Going with your cellular automata analogy, you're missing that people don't have knowledge of the global landscape, only their local neighborhood.

In the modern world, this is true for nobody relevant to the question.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats