Languagepolitics

David Foster Wallace says that "Politics and the English Language" is redundant. It still makes a nice subtitle for "Authority and American Usage," the title that by itself comes across as a little dry. That would be unfair, given the excitement Wallace finds - and I share - in his subject, the new Dictionary of Modern American Usage by Bryan Garner.

Oh, joy, a new bible for geeks, you might say as you flee. I admit that only a few of us will care - including my friend J. Thunder, who sent me the article; my mentor J. Bussert, who had already clued me in to Garner's groundbreaking work; and my geek-daughter Helga, who humors me with questions about words when she's not correcting my syntax. On the outside chance that these socio-linguistic battles will engage anyone else, I'll make the attempt to point out some highlights. Just as a jumping-off place:

...it's now pretty much universally accepted that (a) meaning is inseparable from some act of interpretation and (b) an act of interpretation is always somewhat biased, i.e., informed by the interpreter's particular ideology....decisions about what to put in The Dictionary and what to exclude are going to be based on a lexicographer's ideology. And every lexicographer's got one. To presume that dictionary-making can somehow avoid or transcend ideology is simply to subscribe to a particular ideology, one that might aptly be called Unbelievably Naive Positivism. (p. 86)

Dontcha love it? No!? Still hanging onto the notion that something called 'objectivity' enables the elect and the elite to transcend the muddled and fuzzy realm of mere opinion? It's a lot like George Lakoff's chapter on myths in his book on metaphors, where he describes the indignation expressed in the Myth of Objectivism, which imagines itself outside all points of view, when in fact it's one of them. Richard Rorty says similar things about philosophy, which he sees as "a kind of writing" rather than a superior, all-encompassing body of knowledge - as both Platonists and Positivists fantacize - that includes all other bodies of knowledge (please!). In short, if you want to be 'right' in any of those final, noncontextual ways, get over it.

Clearly, as linguistic communities evolve over time, they discover that some ways of using language are better than others - not better a priori, but better with respect to the community's purposes. (p. 90)

Or, as someone in a nearby cubicle said just today, it's not about being right or wrong but about how to say appropriately what needs to be said in a particular time and place. This business of appropriateness for the purpose helps get around the recurring snag of whether to be descriptive (this is what people actually say) or prescriptive (this is what they should say). How many style guide arguments in the last year have come down to a confrontation over whether to follow the precedent set by current mainstream publications, or whether to try to set a different standard. I guess I'm a prescriptivist, because I think sometimes we know better. Wallace pays Garner a high compliment when he says:

The book's spirit marries rigor and humility in such a way as to let Garner be extremely prescirptive without any appearance of evangelism or elitist put-down. (p. 78)

One of the pitfalls for us prescriptivists if the ever-present danger of using word choice as an opportunity to get up on our favorite soap-box to advocate one set of politics and tear down another. Or the corollary tendency to try to impress one set of readers and patronize another (which I'm probably doing at this moment) by using the vocabulary and grammar of one region, culture, or class rather than another. Wallace also sheds light on the sticky, tricky labyrinth of metacommunication (although he doesn't call it that):

As we sometimes also say about elements of fashion and etiquette, the way you use English "makes a statement" or "sends a message" - even though these statements/messages often have nothing to do with the actual information you're trying to communicate. (p. 94)

Which is half the fun when you get down to it. And I'm only scratching the surface here. If by some miracle you're still reading this, and you want the real stuff, stylishly delivered, read David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays.