Truth, reality, caring less
This is essentially just an addition to the commenting going on under this LL post.
Perhaps a good potential contrast would be “could care less”, discussed many times on this blog [i.e., Language Log -RLG...ah, the perils of cut-and-paste] and elsewhere. The question that arises for many is whether this is licensed by the grammar of English, and thus an interesting case of negation not mattering (or rather, equivalent meanings across expressions that differ only in negation; it would be a mistake, I think, to say that in “i couldn’t care less,” that the “not” is meaningless), or if each and every token is the result of a common sort of processing/production error involving certain types of easy-to-miscompute meanings. That is probably a false dichotomy, but it’s nonetheless how I read ML’s “whether such cases are constructions, fixed expressions, idioms or whatever, as opposed to natural mistakes that people often make in using a psychologically difficult combination of elements and structures” (Caring Less with Stress, 2004.07.08).
One might point out that asking if something is “part of a language” in this context is asking a rather special sort of question that might well assume certain things about competence/performance, and at least the abstract existence of a language with a grammar that exists across speakers but also is individually instantiated in the mind of every speaker of “that language” (again, all useful analytic constructs, but you have to look at cases where they don’t capture exactly what you want to say).
Another (not incompatible I hope) question to ask is, how is language constituted in the mind of every individual, and how does that constitution change when exposed to tokens of “couldn’t care less” or “reality…truth”? If any part of what we do when we speak is imitate and approximate others (both based on distant and recent past experiences), something looked at in great detail for speech sounds, but also for lexical entries and syntactic configurations, then it need not be the case that every instance of over- or undernegation is either a performance error OR the trivial instantiation of a fully-licensed construct of the grammar. In fact, the latter option is, if I understand what people like Bob Port are saying, not really something to be considered for the individual. One might also want to bring in notions of hypo/hypercorrection from John Ohala’s work, though in the case of negation the hyper/hypocorrection story makes sense. With “reality being further from the truth,” you’d want some other notions.
Comments(12)
I don’t know quite where to begin with the above – for example, I don’t see the need to discuss whether we learn by imitation of others. The question is how and when we do so.
Are there any examples where logic is obviously violated in standard English? I don’t think that “I could care less”, double negatives or the example in the thread could really be said to count. So my basic point is that Liberman is simply acting as a prescriptivist in a very typical way, calling something a mistake in standard English because it violates logic, discounting slang. The switch away from “descriptivism” to “scientific prescriptivism” at LL is rather breathtaking really since 99% of the field would still surely question this. Whether or not my point is taken that pointing out mistakes and prescribing are basically the same, I am not sure. Mark certainly seems to hope to change other people’s usage.
But when the question is phrased, “is this in the language,” what underlies that is the notion that there is a recognizable grammar of a language, which is at once social and individual, and which licenses certain expressions and not others (or, a more nuanced version would be: it assigns a particular degree of grammaticality to each possible sentence). It bypasses, it seems to me, crucial differences between generalizations over groups and the behavior of individuals, who may think it’s legitimate to use a particular expression like “could care less” for any number of reasons, including the fact that many people around them use the same expression with some constancy of meaning.
Could you say more precisely why “could care less” is not a violation of logic? I’m not saying I won’t be convinced, but I’m curious how to go about demonstrating that that’s the case.
I think to some degree there something akin to prescriptivism when it comes to describing the grammar of “a language,” because there is always a factoring out of variation. Put another way, how is one to determine what “standard American English” is: one can look at mass media, people’s conceptions of what counts as an “accent,” and who knows what else. But such sources are a limited corpus: not everything you want to describe will be there. And then judgments can really start to differ.
I mean that “could care less” is not standard, and not logical.
This line between standard and non-standard is too often glossed over. Imagine a grammar of English that made only statements that were true of every single dialect of English. A thin book? That is not the book that Pullum wrote for CUP. And finding this important line is not easy at all, corpus linguistics notwithstanding.
As to the final paragraph, yes, very akin to prescriptivism. Especially if you are the first person to describe a language, and others will use your work as a later reference. And in that case you may wish to create prescriptive standards in order to aid communication.
Well, the intro to the CGEL does set out several guidelines and heuristics used to set the scope of the data examined. And they do admit that the notion of “standard” is the most subtle and difficult one to do. And IIRC they do make sure to separate the notion of standard from register: there is standard and non-standard speech for both formal and intimate registers. Of course knowing the boundaries is difficult, but as long as you have those disclaimers and qualifications (never mind if people actually read the front matter of reference books) I think it’s legit to proceed and describe “the grammar of English.”
And, I would say that an important difference between prescriptivism of the type derided on LL and whatever formal linguists do when they limit the scope of their inquiry is that the latter make a clear distinction between “standard” and “correct,” as I’m sure you’re aware. The prescriptivists most criticized (and such people do seem to exist) see one context of communication as setting the standard for all contexts, leading to people who demand of their drinking buddies that they follow the style guide of XYZ publication (in the extreme case).
The boundaries are nearly impossible to draw, to my mind. You can make the distinctions and guidelines in principle, but you can’t decide in practice what is and what is not “standard” English when the grey areas rear their heads. Blogs/comments are a very good example of a mixture of all kinds of registers.
I’m afraid the existence of a standard language is all very mixed up with oppressive power, and this is why linguistics does not deal with it very well. Standards do ultimately derive, to some degree, from precedents set by powerful figures, groups, classes or organizations, and it must be the case even to some extent in a non-literate society. An extremely powerful leader, such as a Mao, can wave his hand and alter usage. An influential writer can move things a little. The discussion that led us here was a very important day in the life of “The reality….”. That discussion will come up 1st on Google, perhaps, and the big chief says no, and that one million customers can be wrong. How many people need to use the phrase before we call it “right”? Can there be a scientific answer?
Take punctuation, for example. If you examine actual usuage, there are few hard and fast rules. Nonetheless, the Language Log writers still generally observe the kind of rules that get prescribed from on high.
Also, sorry for the mixed metaphor above! When I write in favour of ‘informed prescriptivism’ I should be much more careful, even though I am advocating Liberman et al to do the intuitive prescribing, and not myself. Descriptivists or otherwise, people tend to see these kinds of mistakes and decide they are dealing with an idiot. This is why we work hard to conform.
The best I can say is that these are all both difficult and important questions, but modern linguistics (well, “theoretical” linguistics anyway) has set itself a goal that seems best accomplished by abstracting away from inter- and intra-speaker variation. (with several notable exceptions). The move to rid one’s self of the competence-performance distinction might help; or at least replace it with something gradable. Probably wouldn’t satisfy anyone working in the sociology/anthropology of language, since there’s such a gulf between the fields, it seems like any move to make them play together would have to be really truly radical.
I don’t see that linguistics is afraid to tackle intra-speaker variation, but to tackle the fact that standard languages are also status languages, and probably necessarily so. There are few questions posed by average people concerning the norms of dialect, and many concerning the norms of standard languages. This is because people do not have much scholarly interest in these norms, but wish to know how to use the language that carries the highest status.
The difference is crucial, and yet linguists often maintain that the standard dialect is just one more dialect. In sociolinguistic terms, that is utterly wrong.
Joseph (in reply to primarily your last comment): Surely the fact that linguists look at shibboleths at all means that they recognize that at least certain aspects of the standard carry prestige, and as you say, nobody really needs to be told what is current in their dialectal locale – but then, nor do they really need to be told what is current in the more widespread standard, either, apart from the shibboleths (which are as I say at least included if not described well enough, for those who would prefer to use them). Put simply, the only people who really need to be made consciously aware of any sort of standard are foreign learners of “the” language (oops, I put the ‘the’ in scare quotes – leaving you a hook? Nah, not really, that’s just that intra-speaker or competence versus performance stuff, especially when it comes to non-native performance ;). Native speaker adults who have problems with their own language might be genuine dyslexics (and/or have had appallingly bad teachers during their schooling, assuming they went and participated), but probably they just don’t care enough about much to want to communicate at all in writing, so they soon get very out of practice, rapidly “learn” to misspell etc etc.
The phrase we are discussing is one proof that this is not so. People say (and especially write) things which others do not accept as standard English all the time. After all, many people speak in local dialect.
Thus, there are people who “prescribe” to police this. Dictionaries were created as policing tools. There are also linguists who “describe”. Most linguists, unlike the LLog scholars, are content with this idea. However, the process differs from a discussion of dialect. For one thing, a discussion of dialect is not usually held in dialect, and is not an example of what it attempts to describe. Local dialect is not used for intra-communal communication, and thus nobody wishes to studiously internalize the norms that are described, in opposition to standard. You will not find people using the word “wrong” about common dialect phrases, as Liberman has about standard, when a phrase in dialect is proven to be in common use. The norms of the local dialect are not well known to the speakers, they are intuitive, and thus people do not discuss them very much. The dialect is not usually written down. I could go on.
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