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Descriptivism and Countersignalling
Nov. 1st, 2019 05:00 pmThere will be a quiz, so pay attention. Today I overheard an interesting conversation between a couple of my colleagues about language. One of them pointed out that their mom was an English teacher, so they grew up hearing about the "right" way to speak.
Previously on Ranting About Linguistics:
Especially in English, the role of dictionaries/linguistics scholars in general is to document changes in the language, not tell people how to speak. ("descriptive" versus "prescriptive grammar.")
Linguists want to study how people actually speak (and sign!), which is called "descriptivism." Whether that be "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" (not "Julio and me," or "Julio and I") or "to boldly go where no man has gone before" (not "to go boldly"). However, many "prescriptivist" rules such as "don't split infinitives," are derived from Latin, where "to go" is a single word, so inserting a word in the middle would sound really bizarre.
When I was a youngish teenager, around the mid-2000's, and making my way onto Internet forums, I was somewhat more of a grammar snob than I am now, more outwardly rolling my eyes at other posters who used "its" and "it's" interchangeably, etc. I could say that as I grew up I became less judgmental and critical, but that's probably not the case--I just became more quiet, and let random people on the internet go about their own business. Meanwhile, my dad and I still occasionally text each other when we see greengrocers' apostrophes, etc. in the wild.
Written English generally uses an apostrophe to denote contractions (can't) or possession (Alice's restaurant). Written Spanish doesn't have apostrophes; you have to use a word like "de," as in "el restaurante de Alicia," to express possession. However, you wouldn't say "a el" ("to the") or "de el" (of the); those get contracted into "al" or "del."
Obviously, lacking apostrophes doesn't make Spanish "better" or "worse" than English--it just is. But that doesn't mean I can go around writing things like "Aliciades restaurante" and be understood, because I wouldn't be writing Spanish anymore, I'd be writing some twisted Spanglish that only really makes sense in my head. The fact that conventions are arbitrary compared to each other doesn't mean they're arbitrary as in meaningless!
(Aside: when it comes to individual words, signed languages may seem a bit less arbitrary than spoken languages. English "book" and Spanish "libro" are both equally good names to refer to "bunch of paper bound together," but neither word inherently connotes that unless you know the language. The American Sign Language sign for "book," however, looks like hands opening and closing as if moving the covers of a book. So in some sense that's a "better" word to "inherently" mean "bound paper thing." But overall, considering all the signs and grammar forms of ASL, it's still arbitrary like any other natural language, as evidenced by the fact that non-signers probably can't follow a conversation.)
Anyway, why was I more prescriptivist as a young person? Maybe "young" is the operative word. If I made a habit of posting in complete sentences and avoiding slang, maybe people would think I sounded more mature. It was a point of pride for me to hear stuff like "wow, you don't sound fifteen"--I wanted to come across as intelligent, especially for my age. But as I got older, the relative prodigy phenomenon was less important.
But then there are some more operative words: "come across." Obviously, the strangers I chatted with back in the day didn't know or care about my high school GPA. They were left to form impressions of me by the way I post. So I was trying to signal intelligence.
Warning: a lot of the more accessible writeups on signalling and (counter)signalling come from tiresome hyper-utilitarians, so don't go too far down the rabbit hole if you're not into that kind of thing. But tl;dr signalling is like, "conspicuous consumption." Many people who have a lot of money, especially people who have only recently gotten a lot of money, like to buy fast cars or fancy clothes, not because they're more comfortable as cars or clothes, but because they indicate "hey, look at me, I am rich!" So probably, what I was trying to do as a younger person, was say in not so many words, "hey, look at me, I am intelligent!"
But, there's also such a thing as countersignalling. If the nouveau riche spend a lot of money on fast cars, what do the old-timey rich people do? Not that. They just dress modestly and think to themselves "I don't care whether people can tell if I'm rich; at least I won't be confused for a nouveau riche person who's just showing off. Those plebians." So, if grammar signalling is a thing, should we see grammar countersignalling too?
Well, I just said, linguists are descriptivist. One of the things we* tell students in Linguistics 101 is that they shouldn't expect to be studying prescriptivist rules like "don't end a sentence with a preposition," that's not what the course is about. So to some extent, linguists are looking down their nose at stuffy old English teachers who are giving kids these days the wrong impression of how language works. But to another extent, linguists are just trying to do their job and make sure their students know what to expect.
*I am definitely not a linguist by trade. I picked up enough bits and pieces, and had a weird financial situation, so I wound up TAing several terms of Linguistics 101. But don't regard me as an ultimate authority, because I definitely am not.
There are, however, people who go on about descriptivism without seeming to care much about linguistics in general. It goes like:
Person 1: hi i r n00by whr is chat, thx lol
Person 2: ...Chat is this way, for people who can use complete sentences.
Person 3: Well actually you're just being judgmental and high-and-mighty, not everyone has had the same educational opportunities as you, so come off your high horse already.
If Person 3 ever had anything cool to say about aspirated P or ASL's relationship to French sign language or ambiguous headlines or any of the other fun things I've run across in linguistics class, I might give them the benefit of the doubt and think "well, they're just really passionate about descriptivism." But if they don't ever do that...then they're probably countersignalling because they don't want to be confused for an insecure intelligent person like I used to be. Just because language is always changing doesn't mean it doesn't have meaning at any given moment, and just because "all words are on some level made up anyway" doesn't give you, or anyone else, the right to put words in my mouth!
Quiz time: I mentioned I had a colleague whose mother was a (prescriptivist) English teacher. Is that colleague a man or a woman?
Trick question, I didn't tell you, because I referenced that person with singular they. Why? Because that's how a lot of native English-speakers talk and have talked for hundreds of years. Maybe in five hundred years we'll all use "they" instead of "he" or "she," and we'll have a different word meaning "those people [plural]." I don't know what that word would be or where it would come from, but language is always changing!
Previously on Ranting About Linguistics:
Especially in English, the role of dictionaries/linguistics scholars in general is to document changes in the language, not tell people how to speak. ("descriptive" versus "prescriptive grammar.")
When I was a youngish teenager, around the mid-2000's, and making my way onto Internet forums, I was somewhat more of a grammar snob than I am now, more outwardly rolling my eyes at other posters who used "its" and "it's" interchangeably, etc. I could say that as I grew up I became less judgmental and critical, but that's probably not the case--I just became more quiet, and let random people on the internet go about their own business. Meanwhile, my dad and I still occasionally text each other when we see greengrocers' apostrophes, etc. in the wild.
Written English generally uses an apostrophe to denote contractions (can't) or possession (Alice's restaurant). Written Spanish doesn't have apostrophes; you have to use a word like "de," as in "el restaurante de Alicia," to express possession. However, you wouldn't say "a el" ("to the") or "de el" (of the); those get contracted into "al" or "del."
Obviously, lacking apostrophes doesn't make Spanish "better" or "worse" than English--it just is. But that doesn't mean I can go around writing things like "Aliciades restaurante" and be understood, because I wouldn't be writing Spanish anymore, I'd be writing some twisted Spanglish that only really makes sense in my head. The fact that conventions are arbitrary compared to each other doesn't mean they're arbitrary as in meaningless!
(Aside: when it comes to individual words, signed languages may seem a bit less arbitrary than spoken languages. English "book" and Spanish "libro" are both equally good names to refer to "bunch of paper bound together," but neither word inherently connotes that unless you know the language. The American Sign Language sign for "book," however, looks like hands opening and closing as if moving the covers of a book. So in some sense that's a "better" word to "inherently" mean "bound paper thing." But overall, considering all the signs and grammar forms of ASL, it's still arbitrary like any other natural language, as evidenced by the fact that non-signers probably can't follow a conversation.)
Anyway, why was I more prescriptivist as a young person? Maybe "young" is the operative word. If I made a habit of posting in complete sentences and avoiding slang, maybe people would think I sounded more mature. It was a point of pride for me to hear stuff like "wow, you don't sound fifteen"--I wanted to come across as intelligent, especially for my age. But as I got older, the relative prodigy phenomenon was less important.
But then there are some more operative words: "come across." Obviously, the strangers I chatted with back in the day didn't know or care about my high school GPA. They were left to form impressions of me by the way I post. So I was trying to signal intelligence.
Warning: a lot of the more accessible writeups on signalling and (counter)signalling come from tiresome hyper-utilitarians, so don't go too far down the rabbit hole if you're not into that kind of thing. But tl;dr signalling is like, "conspicuous consumption." Many people who have a lot of money, especially people who have only recently gotten a lot of money, like to buy fast cars or fancy clothes, not because they're more comfortable as cars or clothes, but because they indicate "hey, look at me, I am rich!" So probably, what I was trying to do as a younger person, was say in not so many words, "hey, look at me, I am intelligent!"
But, there's also such a thing as countersignalling. If the nouveau riche spend a lot of money on fast cars, what do the old-timey rich people do? Not that. They just dress modestly and think to themselves "I don't care whether people can tell if I'm rich; at least I won't be confused for a nouveau riche person who's just showing off. Those plebians." So, if grammar signalling is a thing, should we see grammar countersignalling too?
Well, I just said, linguists are descriptivist. One of the things we* tell students in Linguistics 101 is that they shouldn't expect to be studying prescriptivist rules like "don't end a sentence with a preposition," that's not what the course is about. So to some extent, linguists are looking down their nose at stuffy old English teachers who are giving kids these days the wrong impression of how language works. But to another extent, linguists are just trying to do their job and make sure their students know what to expect.
*I am definitely not a linguist by trade. I picked up enough bits and pieces, and had a weird financial situation, so I wound up TAing several terms of Linguistics 101. But don't regard me as an ultimate authority, because I definitely am not.
There are, however, people who go on about descriptivism without seeming to care much about linguistics in general. It goes like:
Person 1: hi i r n00by whr is chat, thx lol
Person 2: ...Chat is this way, for people who can use complete sentences.
Person 3: Well actually you're just being judgmental and high-and-mighty, not everyone has had the same educational opportunities as you, so come off your high horse already.
If Person 3 ever had anything cool to say about aspirated P or ASL's relationship to French sign language or ambiguous headlines or any of the other fun things I've run across in linguistics class, I might give them the benefit of the doubt and think "well, they're just really passionate about descriptivism." But if they don't ever do that...then they're probably countersignalling because they don't want to be confused for an insecure intelligent person like I used to be. Just because language is always changing doesn't mean it doesn't have meaning at any given moment, and just because "all words are on some level made up anyway" doesn't give you, or anyone else, the right to put words in my mouth!
Quiz time: I mentioned I had a colleague whose mother was a (prescriptivist) English teacher. Is that colleague a man or a woman?
Trick question, I didn't tell you, because I referenced that person with singular they. Why? Because that's how a lot of native English-speakers talk and have talked for hundreds of years. Maybe in five hundred years we'll all use "they" instead of "he" or "she," and we'll have a different word meaning "those people [plural]." I don't know what that word would be or where it would come from, but language is always changing!
