primeideal

The Wall Street Journal has some hot takes on literature and culture stuff on occasion. They're generally considered to lean "conservative" in the US sense, but sometimes, the takes aren't right-wing so much as...annoying. Excerpting significantly from a paywalled article:

( Fordham nerds, they are all over the place )

Okay, so, there's a lot going on here. "Stuart Little" was written in 1945. I haven't seen the movie or TV show so I can't speak to whether or not they're that terrible, but I'll give Cassuto the benefit of the doubt.

-E.B. White apparently kept a bunch of the letters students and teachers sent to him, even though he didn't even like the efforts. Why?
-The students wrote their own conclusions to the story because they wanted more conclusive endings. Is this something the teacher assigned them for a class project, or did they themselves actually choose to write fix-it fanfic?
-If the genius of "Stuart Little" is that it's so much better than all those other neat endings, why didn't it completely revolutionize the field? Could it be that (some, many) children actually don't like that style?
-is falling in love one of the ambitions or desires that make Stuart "fully human"?
-What is Moore implying the story should have affirmed? Some Aesop lesson? But I would think there are children's books pre-1945 that don't really have obvious morals either...?
-I don't understand what Cassuto is saying about "similar reasons." They cut a scene about Harriet, where Stuart comes to terms with his own insecurities. That's bad because...? They should have had the romance plot? Something else? (Beyond "most adaptations aren't that good anyway.")
-Cassuto himself admitted that he didn't like the ending when he first read it. I'm assuming he does now? Did he go through some magical transformative Maturity thing where he stopped wanting resolutions and closure and became a Good Adult? Why doesn't he write about that, for the edification of the Dumb Kids?
-in conclusion, aaaaaaaaaargh

Another win on FTL, again with the Carnelian/Crystal B. I actually spent money at stores rather than waiting around for good augments/weapons to fall into my lap, to get Stealth Weapons and the Chain Vulcan (!) Usually the Crystal B is a good boarding ship, but against the Flagship you need other weapons too, so that paid off!

( Proofreading blahs )

Almost a year ago I wrote this

The contrapositive of that is "If you don't hold bad-and-wrong position Z, then you totally should get into fandom A." Usually in the context of "because the creator of fandom A is a super progressive and good person!" And that's, like, also a problem, because just because someone has some similar opinions to you doesn't mean they're going to find the same fictional tropes enjoyable. (Again, especially when the issue in question isn't really related to the work of fiction.) I will repeat that it's not my place to gatekeep, so anyone should feel free to get into or out of any fandom for any reason. But if I see a bunch of people flock to my fandom because "I heard it was produced by a morally righteous person," I'm not going to be super enthused. Partly because that's often in the context of "everyone is either the best or the worst," so the goalposts may shift against that creator soon. And partly because it has all the enthusiasm of an "eat your vegetables" kind of fandom, except that these vegetables aren't even in the fandom in question. (Though it can sometimes occur in a similar context of "this pseudo-'representation' counts and is valid, this other pseudo-representation is unacceptable, I have said so because I am the ultimate decider.")

Ah well.

There 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: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!

Like...so the way the system usually works in my country is that for the basic/ish price you get one "carry-on bag" (small suitcase which goes in the compartment on top) and one "personal item" (backpack that goes under the seat in front of you). If you want something else, like a checked bag (larger, gets deposited at baggage claim later), you have to pay for it. Now, I tend not to need that, by this time I'm kind of an old pro at fitting lots of stuff in the backpack, yada yada. Assuming I actually make it onto the plane with my carry-on, I sometimes have trouble reaching the overhead bin, because I am small. And very often the security theater personnel will be like "...how old are you"? Spoiler alert I am old enough to travel on my own and be forced to go through all the security nonsense, I just look like a small child.

But. Very often it'll be like "oops we don't have enough space, would someone like to check their carry-on? (:" And the answer is always no, no person would like to do that, because if they didn't already pay for a checked bag they don't want the timesink of waiting for it at baggage claim. How airlines still have not figured out this basic fact of human psychology is a mystery. What they should do is

a) first, have the parties that are checking a bag anyway check their carry-on
b) if there is still a need, randomly draft people

instead of the current scenario, which is

1) guilt-trip randoms
2) just force the people boarding last to do so.

Surely they are smart enough to figure this out.

I have this gripe every few months even if I don't write it up, so a new one this week: one of my recent flights (back from an academic conference) got cancelled for weather reasons. I was able to reschedule for later that day and felt pretty good about myself when it looked like basically everything in that airport/airlines was shut down...and then they cancelled on me and there was nowhere to rebook for the next three days. Like, it's a great city and I was lucky to have great people to stay with, but...that is unusual.