In one of those random You Tube searches, I found this short video about the Irish language and the Gaeltachts.

Now that I’m teaching sociolinguistics again, I am having to consider the line between presenting a topic humorously in order to reach out to students and coming off as being either flip or sensitive.

If I may have an ironic sociological moment here, this is an issue that many educated white people of the sarcastic persuasion have to consider. What I may see through an ironic lens someone else really could see as insulting.

Consider the 80s film The Gods Must Be Crazy from South Africa. The plot is that Xi, an indigenous African still living the ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyle discovers a Coca-Cola bottle dropped from a plane. The tribe has theoretically never seen anything like it and consider it a gift from the gods. At some point Xi goes on a quest to learn more about the divine object and ends up encountering the bizarre civilization of white modern South Africa. It was crazy all right.

If you take the plot literally, it sounds like an insulting portrait of “naive” natives. However, I and others have actually considered it a parody of how white anthropologists work with non-Western cultures. Although most academics no longer see these cultures as being “barbaric”, they may still be seen as sweetly childlike, which can be just as damaging. This movie though shows that Xi and his people have plenty of common sense, especially in comparison to the ditzy white South Africaners.

In reality of course, almost all “indigenous” peoples have been in contact with the West for decades now and many have either voluntarily or been forced to give up their traditional lifestyle. This can often be very tragic, but it can also lead to juxtapositions of people in traditional African dress texting on their cell phones. Or men shopping in an Afghan bazaar. It’s a good reminder that traditional peoples can adopt to new technology quite well when they see the benefits.

But as much as I like the satiric aspect of the movie, I will admit that it’s still a white perspective of indigenous peoples, and that means there is always potential for misunderstanding and offense. This why I may have to create a “Foot in Mouth” badge to capture those times when my sarcasm goes awry. On the other hand, sometimes humor makes a point more efficiently and more memorably than any sincerely heartfelt presentation ever could.

I think the world really needs is more movies from around the world and definitely more snark from everyone around the world. Maybe then we can all have a good laugh together.

My Confession

As a linguist, I am prone to the occasional or not-so-occasional rant against prescriptivist grammar, but I will confess that some of my issues arise from the fact that I am a terrible proofer. Not only do I miss ridiculous typos on my published work, but I will fail to see them even when someone says “There’s a typo on your page.” (Can you specific please?)

Not so my mother. Not only was she an excellent proofreader, she was the classic case of the “compulsive proofreader” described so vividly by Anna Fadiman in her charming essay “Inset a Carrot” (with at least two obvious errors) published in her book Ex Libris. I can still hear her despair as she spotted YET another typo in my resume (or is that “résumé?).

In the Fadiman clan, it was common practice, actually more like a sport or hobby, to proofread EVERYTHING read whether it was the newspaper, billboards, menus or even library books. As Fadiman notes, if you are compulsive proofer, you know it, and so do all your kith and kin. Fadiman also has the grace to know that while proofers feel duty bound to point out errors (because they just jump right off the page), the rest of us don’t feel to so duty bound to listen to the diatribe against the upcoming destruction of civilization as we know it. We non-proofers get it – we suck at proofing.

So with this dichotomy in mind, I would like to propose my idea for gracefully passing on typo corrections to the offending party.

I, The Non-Proofer, acknowledge:

I hereby acknowledge that

• I need to improve my proofing skills.
• A typo-free and error-free piece of writing enhances my credibility.
• Accurate information is important. I NEVER ever want to repeat the error of writing “Hebrew” when I meant “Arabic” (duplicating and re-editing a document can be very dangerous).
• You may be sharing information I was previously unaware of.

You, the Proofing Expert, understand that:

• Proofing errors are unintentional.
• Proofing errors are invisible to me for the most part – until it’s much too late.
• Some “proofing” errors are actually dialectal quirks (more on that below).

Please consider these proofing etiquette practices

Unless you have been specifically asked to proofread a text (in which case we expect the best, most brutal proofing possible), you may want to

1. Be specific describing error and correction

The following is too vague:

“You have an error on your page on grammar. Ironically, it’s a very common error I see everyday.”

The above has now forced me to consider where the heck the error might be (Arrgh). The following is much more helpful.

“In the second paragraph, the phrase ‘gramar police’ should be ‘grammar police’ ”

Not only does the second version help me locate the error, I can cut and paste the correct text if my vision is especially blurry. Thank you kind stranger.

2. Gently refrain from too much laughter at my expense

Once, when my other found “kine” for “kind” she explained to the administrative assistant that she had accidentally inserted an archaic word for cows. True, but this is not the time to introduce obscure etymological trivia.

3. Don’t allude to the erosion of standards and civilization

And especially, don’t point out that a linguist should know better because we ALWAYS have an annoying language fact to counter with such as these below.

1. While we all agree that Latin died as a living language, it actually became civilized languages like Italian, French and Spanish. Chill.
2. Speaking of Latin, I would point out that in phonologically correct Latin, a title like Ex Libris would be Ex Lībrīs with long marks. You are also free to point out that the Romans rarely used long marks. I will then point out that it’s all about the standard being used at the time.

4. I reserve the right to reject certain hypercorrect “errors”

Unless you are a paid publisher, I will never change spontaneous use of “which” in a restrictive relative clause to “that” because it destroys the rhythm. I have no idea who invented this rule, but it’s one of the more ridiculous ones IMO. Even Oxford says “which” is allowed in this context. As does Purdue OWL.

Prepositions spontaneously stranded will also remain stranded.

The singular “datum” and “criterion” will be avoided as much as possible in favor of collective “data” and “criterion”. I will also never use “criterium” which is just etymologically incorrect.

5. Prioritize!

A piece of inaccurate information (“I think you meant Czech and NOT Slovak”) does need to be addressed. Another misplaced comma or quotation mark – not so much.

6. If you want to secure the “thank you”

Consider pointing out that the text you are proofing is beneficial to the public and that you are doing it out of concern.

I’ve had many kind strangers approach me thus, and they do get attended much more quickly and gratefully. In fact, I consider typo reports a sign that someone is paying attention…which is sort of nice I must confess.

In linguistics, the term “prescriptive grammar” is used describe what educated individuals are SUPPOSED to say and write (e.g. Double negatives are not allowed in English). This is in contrast, of course, “descriptive grammars” which describe what people ACTUALLY say and write, including double negatives and loss of “whom” in most speakers.

Linguists have also coined the term “prescriptivist” to describe someone who has made it a mission to help others learn and use prescriptive grammar. I think most of us would agree that prescriptivists include writing instructors and editors whose job is to ensure that publications appear authoritative to the general public.

The term also includes people with the uncanny people to spot any and all typos and prescriptive errors from 20 feet away as well as though who worry about how the English language is being mangled by new-fangled jargon and weird grammatical rules that just don’t make any sense. I admit, that for some words (e.g. “administrate”), I too am a prescriptivist.

A New Prescriptivist Class

But this post isn’t about this traditional class of prescriptivist warrior. It’s about a new class of person that isn’t normally connected to the “language arts” but one which is surprisingly passionate about proper usage.

I am speaking of the techno-prescriptivists which are technology and science specialists who adhere to certain notation and language standards…and want to make sure you do too.

I think the first true techno-prescriptivist I knew was my high school physics instructor. He was actually a great teacher, but he was very firm in his notation standards. For instance, I seem to recall a strong mandate that “meter” should be abbreviated as simple “m” and not “m.” (m with a period). This must be true, since I just found found the same statement from an instructor at the University of North Carolina. That site further explains:

In the International System of Units (SI), the units do not have “abbreviations”. They have symbols [e.g. “m”]. The unit symbols do not follow the grammatical rules for abbreviations, because they follow the mathematical rules for symbols instead.

However, as Grammar Girl rightly notes – there is actually quite a bit of variation in whether that “m” is going solo or getting hooked up with a little dot. Her recommendation is to just listen to your editor (or instructor). Always good advice if you need want to get published (or get an A).

Prescriptivism vs. Standards

For the record, I do agree that it is important that measurement standards be properly established. It’s important to know that if we agree to 60 sec. (Oops “60 s”), we know how long the duration of time is. Otherwise technology as we know will start to break down.

What I think linguists (including myself) object to in “prescriptivism” is the enforcement of a rule that really has no impact in understanding or real world consequence. For instance, when Mick Jagger wails “Can’t Get No Satisfaction”, no English native speaker ever negates the two negative operators and concludes that he is unable to enter into a state of dissatisfaction. No, we clearly understand that Mick is very unsatisfied.

Similarly, the presence or absence of a dot after the “m” symbol/abbreviation is not critical to understanding that “m” is short form of “meter”. Hence, the insistence of the correctness of one form over another is pure prescriptivism.

Compare “no dot after m for meter” rule to something like Postal Code state abbreviations where it is critical to properly distinguish MI (Michigan) from MO (Missouri), MN (Minnesota) and MS (Mississippi). The use of “MI” for any state beginning with “MI” would be ambiguous.

Not an Isolated Example

In case you thought the above was an isolated example, I am here to say it is not. Any science or technology professional can share a debate about how to pronounce/use/write many a word or phrase. Several years ago, I recall a very intense debate on whether a blog had to be open to the public to be a real blog. I think you know what my stand was on that.

If there is a lesson for linguistics, it’s that prescriptivism isn’t just a linguistic behavior. In fact, I would argue that wherever there is a standard, even a very important critical technical standard, there is also a prescriptivist waiting to let you know what NOT to do.

P.S. I’d tell you about the “embroidery police” and the “quilting police”, but that would take up several more entries.

Just because I’m doing some accessibility testing.

A few days ago, Google introduced a site they called Culturomics in which users could enter two or more terms and get a graph representing their frequency of occurrence with the Google Books archives. Depending on your word selection, you can get some interesting results. For instance, the verb form ain’t has been attested since 1840 with the now “correct” not appearing widely until 1840.

I can tell this service has successfully grabbed the attention of the popular imagination, since some sci-fi fans put in some genre-themed word pairs. Apparently Darth Vader IS more popular than Luke Skywalker. However there are some issues to consider.

One critique comes from Mark Davies, a member of the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). One feature that the COHA interface has that the n-gram doesn’t have is that it lists frequently found co-occuring words (or “collocates”). For instance, in 1900, the word gay may frequently occur along side words such as “happiness, light, carefree”. Today it is much more likely to co-occur along words such as “rights” or “marriage” (especially in news articles).

Davies also notes that the Google tool doesn’t yet distinguish between parts of speech or differences in usage/meaning, and this can be very important. For instance, a chart of twitter shows a peak circa 1900, but at that time it referred to sounds a bird might make (or perhaps the sound of gossipy chit chat). Today it generally refers to the Twitter service – but there is no way to distinguish this use.

Similarly, the tool doesn’t also allow you to view the types of passage in which a word occurs. For instance, the word ain’t continues to be found in written text, but it may be that after 1840, the context for a lot of the uses is in writing guides saying to AVOID “ain’t”. That makes a difference in how to analyze usage of “ain’t” over time.

That’s not to say that there is no use to the Culturomics tool, especially if the terms are very specific and unambiguous (e.g. Darth Vader), but I do have to agree with Davies that it doesn’t let you track the subtleties very well. But fortunately, there are other tools out there that linguists can use. But I will have to admit that the interface will be more complex.

Postscript: Jan 4, 2011

There have been several experiments online, especially on Language Log (e.g. northeaster vs nor’easter) working to see how the Google engine works, and Google is responding. One feature I initially missed is that you can narrow your corpus a bit. For instance, I ran the isn’t/ain’t pair again but restricted it the the “English fiction” corpus – this should rule out pesky grammar books (although it would be distinguish quote in “dialect”). It’s still interesting to note that “isn’t” is not a clear winner until sometime after 1900.

Postscript 2: Jan 7, 2011

One issue that could also be problematic is synonyms/heteronyms as well as multiple usage. For instance, a report of dove may not distinguish the irregular past from the bird of peace.