This really just seems to be linguistic pedantry/elitism disguised as trying to make a good point. Almost none of these situations ever lead to misunderstandings, and it seems like you’re just annoyed that people use words differently than the dictionary definition tells them to.
I’ve never had a misunderstanding involving any of the OP’s examples, except the one about exceptions. (And what does that prove?) I’ve actually had several arguments that went like this:
Interlocutor: [generalization]
Me: But what about [exception]?
Interlocutor: That’s the exception that proves the rule.
My citing of an exception seemed in no way to weaken my interlocutor’s confidence. Was this because the “exception” cliché was just a cached phrase that stepped in to block a change of mind?
This is my thought as well. Every one of the examples given I would attribute to dialectal differences between common usage and the more technical and jargon-filled language used by scientists and science fans. SaidAchmiz even admits that for some of these, the usage he doesn’t like is more common, which is a big hint. My understanding is that speakers very rarely adopt usage which will be misunderstood by the language group they typically speak with.
“hmm, is that really what you meant to say?” is often met with absurd arguments to the effect that no, this phrasing is not nonsensical after all, these words mean what I want them to, and who the hell are you to try to legislate usage, anyway?
Isn’t this exactly why we have the technique of Rationalist Taboo? It doesn’t matter whether the meaning someone ascribes to a word seems stupid to you, once you understand what they mean by the word, and they understand what you mean by the word, you can move on. The best ways I’ve found to do this are to coin two new words (I like to prepend the word in question with the name of the person whose meaning we are trying to capture), or to always replace the word with its intended substance for the rest of the discourse.
SaidAchmiz even admits that for some of these, the usage he doesn’t like is more common, which is a big hint.
Do you really think this is the case? How does this apply to “the exception that proves the rule”, for instance?
Consider this hypothetical exchange:
Bob: All bears are either black or white. Fred: Eh? But I saw a brown bear just yesterday. Bob: Well, that’s the exception that proves the rule.
Let’s suppose that this usage is in fact more common than the two that I cited as “correct”. It seems to be either false or meaningless. What is Bob saying here? How does Rationalist Taboo help us?
Let’s suppose that this usage is in fact more common than the two that I cited as “correct”. It seems to be either false or meaningless. What is Bob saying here?
You said in the OP that the more common usage takes the phrase to refer to any exception. So from that, Bob probably means that the brown bear you saw is an exception.
How does Rationalist Taboo help us?
Seeing as how Bob probably means that the brown bear is an exception, his argument is poor. So I would then say something like, “since you agree that there is an exception, you should agree that not all bears are black or white”. If he disagrees, then he isn’t using the common meaning after all and I would ask him to taboo the phrase “exception that proves the rule” to find out what he does mean.
Every dictionary I can find gives one definition of “comprise” as a synonym for compose or constitute. For example:
Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 [synonym for compose, constitute] is still attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical writing rather than belles lettres. Our current evidence shows a slight shift in usage: sense 3 is somewhat more frequent in recent literary use than the earlier senses. You should be aware, however, that if you use sense 3 you may be subject to criticism for doing so, and you may want to choose a safer synonym such as compose or make up.
My intention was not so much to claim that one meaning is unambiguously correct and one is wrong — after all, an initially “wrong” meaning can become “right” through usage. (For what it’s worth, http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/comprised.html contradicts your claim of a consensus while acknowledging the controversy.) The point, rather, is that many people use the word without being aware that there’s any kind of controversy, or that there are multiple meanings.
Similarly, if you find some code on the Internet, paste it into your program, and it works (in the sense that it doesn’t crash or break, and seems to do what you wanted), but you have absolutely no idea why it works or what it means, that’s still cargo cult programming.
I do see how what I wrote may convey the impression that I was expressing an authoritative position on the matter, though.
There’s a difference between the two domains in that most people learn most of their vocabulary through context, at least in their native language (or so I imagine). Sure, one can still use a word incorrectly or use it correctly but without knowing what it means. But I guess I’m not sure why it’s useful to think of these errors in this way. If I want to reduce my use of “cargo-cult language,” I can’t just notice when I’m copying and pasting code and then stop doing that.
I think there may be less of a difference between the two domains than you think. Copying and pasting entire blocks of code is one way that cargo cult programming happens, but it’s not the only way. Consider the following example from C:
void main() is (or was, at least) a fairly common construction. It compiles, it executes. Many, many people learned it from their comp sci textbooks or teachers as such a basic part of How To Write C Programs™ that they don’t even think of it as something that they copied from somewhere. But they have no idea why it could be bad, because it’s something they do without understanding why. This is classic cargo cult programming.
But you’re quite right that it’s not trivial to just stop making errors of this sort. I do think it’s one of those things where just being aware of it helps. I don’t have any concrete advice beyond “think more closely about the things you say and write”, but that’s neither original nor specific to this case.
Yes, C99 specifies that main() should be of type int, and most modern compilers will flag void main() as an error. This wasn’t always the case, and some compilers may still let you get away with it.
Do you react similarly to all instances in which people try to correct other people’s usage? Or only some, and if so, which sorts? In other words, corrections of which of the following do you consider pedantry/elitism, and which do you think are justified:
Spelling
Grammar
Style
Cliches, awkward constructions, etc. (e.g. Orwell’s complaints)
Incorrect usage of terminology
Other?
I don’t mean this as a rebuttal; I’m genuinely curious about your opinion on descriptive vs. prescriptive language rules.
I’m pretty descriptivist. In terms of whether I consider a thing to be justified or elitism, it entirely depends on context. If someone makes a statement and your complaint about that statement is imprecise use of the word precision, then you are being pedantic, and not actually addressing the relevant statement. Similarly, frowning on people’s (debatable)misuse of words like comprise serves no purpose other than to display your greater knowledge (ie higher status) of definition and minutiae. On the other hand, if someone tips lik thes wen triing tu comminicate I view correction as fully justified. Similarly, if talking about the specifics of a field where jargon is to be expected and understood by all parties, I don’t mind someone correcting someone’s understanding of bytes or bits, or whether something is an ape or a hominid.
Fair enough. The following, then, is a rebuttal to your top-level comment.
If you use two words interchangeably, whose meanings are originally distinct, then you lose the ability to use your word choice in this case to indicate one of the meanings and not the other. Meanwhile, your audience is no longer able to divine, from your word choice, which thing you mean. This weakens your ability to communicate effectively.
I am then making the additional, empirical claim that a common cause of these sorts of mistakes is people using words or phrases without being aware of the specifics of their meaning. In the case of word substitution, the writer is not aware that the words mean different things; or is not aware that a word has multiple, possibly opposed, meanings; or has no idea what a saying or expression really means. This may not be the only cause of misuse[1] of any of the words or phrases I mentioned, but it’s one cause, and I think a common one.
The follow-up claim is that being unaware of distinctions between words (and the concepts to which they refer), or being unaware of the ideas referred to by the phrases you use, is bad for you. That is what I was alluding to with the last two links in my post.
All of this is not to say that in real life, if you made some statement in which you use “accurate” instead of “precise”, my first reaction would be “Now hang on there, my good man, don’t you mean ‘precise’? Take care not to make such embarrassing slips!” I would — silently, almost unconsciously — quickly weigh the likelihood of you intending one meaning vs. the other; situate your word choice in the context of your statement and the surrounding conversation; and in any case we may well not be discussing matters so grave that the distinction even matters. Finally, if I’m still confused and I think it matters, I can just ask for clarification — though I mentioned in my post that this doesn’t always go well, especially if you are in fact not aware that the two words have different meanings in the first place.
There is a difference, however, between that sort of communication and the kind where your intended meaning is completely transparent to me and where you are conveying exactly the ideas you mean to convey, with no ambiguity and no chance of misunderstanding. I am not sure what to make of the attitude that this is not, all else being equal, preferable to the other sort. (Note: I am not ascribing such an attitude to you.)
That being said, though, I would prefer not to recapitulate any of the standard descriptivist vs. prescriptivist arguments here, not least because I don’t think I have anything particularly new to add to that debate. I only hope to have clarified that my problem isn’t with incorrect[2] usage per se; it’s with the consequences of this particular cause of incorrect usage.
[1] By “misuse” here I only mean “divergence from accepted or standard usage”; this isn’t to imply that such divergence is automatically “wrong” in an absolute sense. [2] Same here.
I think you may have a legitimate point but agree with the thread OP that your examples are poor.
You stated the source of my disagreement yourself: “Cargo cult language [can be recognized with] the question: “What do you mean by that?”.”
[Warning, obvious statement incoming]
I believe that in most cases where someone says precise in a place where the word accurate would make more sense, while they may be hiding some hidden connotative inferences (as is the human norm), they do have a meaning in mind, the concept of accuracy.
Thus they can answer your question “what do you mean by that,” although their answer may be missing some of the incoherent inferences they were making, like “in a sciencey way!”
Certainly they can answer the question. The indication of cargo cult language, as I conceive it, isn’t necessarily that the speaker can’t answer the question, but that it’s asked in the first place (cf. my third example); in other words, there’s a suspicion that the actual meaning of the word/phrase the speaker used does not match what they intended to say (because they don’t actually know what the word/phrase means).
Under that interpretation, “it often isn’t clear whether the speaker really knows what he’s saying and means to say it or is simply parroting.” is a false dichotomy.
The speaker can know what they mean to say, accidentally say something different, and not be simply parroting. They may even be understood because e.g. using accuracy and precision as synonyms is common vernacular.
SaidAchmiz asked for an opinion and I gave an honest one. I may be wrong in the view of some other people but that is still my honest opinion. It is not an overgeneralization as I believe that in all cases, in all situations, at all times the descriptive approach is preferable to the prescriptive one.
The descriptive approach may well be universally preferable to the prescriptive one, but that does not make it more scientific, productive, and interesting. It need not be preferable in every respect.
This really just seems to be linguistic pedantry/elitism disguised as trying to make a good point. Almost none of these situations ever lead to misunderstandings, and it seems like you’re just annoyed that people use words differently than the dictionary definition tells them to.
I’ve never had a misunderstanding involving any of the OP’s examples, except the one about exceptions. (And what does that prove?) I’ve actually had several arguments that went like this:
Interlocutor: [generalization] Me: But what about [exception]? Interlocutor: That’s the exception that proves the rule.
My citing of an exception seemed in no way to weaken my interlocutor’s confidence. Was this because the “exception” cliché was just a cached phrase that stepped in to block a change of mind?
This is my thought as well. Every one of the examples given I would attribute to dialectal differences between common usage and the more technical and jargon-filled language used by scientists and science fans. SaidAchmiz even admits that for some of these, the usage he doesn’t like is more common, which is a big hint. My understanding is that speakers very rarely adopt usage which will be misunderstood by the language group they typically speak with.
Isn’t this exactly why we have the technique of Rationalist Taboo? It doesn’t matter whether the meaning someone ascribes to a word seems stupid to you, once you understand what they mean by the word, and they understand what you mean by the word, you can move on. The best ways I’ve found to do this are to coin two new words (I like to prepend the word in question with the name of the person whose meaning we are trying to capture), or to always replace the word with its intended substance for the rest of the discourse.
Do you really think this is the case? How does this apply to “the exception that proves the rule”, for instance?
Consider this hypothetical exchange:
Bob: All bears are either black or white.
Fred: Eh? But I saw a brown bear just yesterday.
Bob: Well, that’s the exception that proves the rule.
Let’s suppose that this usage is in fact more common than the two that I cited as “correct”. It seems to be either false or meaningless. What is Bob saying here? How does Rationalist Taboo help us?
You said in the OP that the more common usage takes the phrase to refer to any exception. So from that, Bob probably means that the brown bear you saw is an exception.
Seeing as how Bob probably means that the brown bear is an exception, his argument is poor. So I would then say something like, “since you agree that there is an exception, you should agree that not all bears are black or white”. If he disagrees, then he isn’t using the common meaning after all and I would ask him to taboo the phrase “exception that proves the rule” to find out what he does mean.
Yes, it does.
I think that was an unfair clipping. The context of that quote was the OP’s statement about the usefulness of getting clarification of language usage.
My point is that having to play rationalist taboo is still much worse then not having to play it.
Well said. This is basically my own thought as well.
Every dictionary I can find gives one definition of “comprise” as a synonym for compose or constitute. For example:
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprise)
My intention was not so much to claim that one meaning is unambiguously correct and one is wrong — after all, an initially “wrong” meaning can become “right” through usage. (For what it’s worth, http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/comprised.html contradicts your claim of a consensus while acknowledging the controversy.) The point, rather, is that many people use the word without being aware that there’s any kind of controversy, or that there are multiple meanings.
Similarly, if you find some code on the Internet, paste it into your program, and it works (in the sense that it doesn’t crash or break, and seems to do what you wanted), but you have absolutely no idea why it works or what it means, that’s still cargo cult programming.
I do see how what I wrote may convey the impression that I was expressing an authoritative position on the matter, though.
There’s a difference between the two domains in that most people learn most of their vocabulary through context, at least in their native language (or so I imagine). Sure, one can still use a word incorrectly or use it correctly but without knowing what it means. But I guess I’m not sure why it’s useful to think of these errors in this way. If I want to reduce my use of “cargo-cult language,” I can’t just notice when I’m copying and pasting code and then stop doing that.
I think there may be less of a difference between the two domains than you think. Copying and pasting entire blocks of code is one way that cargo cult programming happens, but it’s not the only way. Consider the following example from C:
void main() is (or was, at least) a fairly common construction. It compiles, it executes. Many, many people learned it from their comp sci textbooks or teachers as such a basic part of How To Write C Programs™ that they don’t even think of it as something that they copied from somewhere. But they have no idea why it could be bad, because it’s something they do without understanding why. This is classic cargo cult programming.
But you’re quite right that it’s not trivial to just stop making errors of this sort. I do think it’s one of those things where just being aware of it helps. I don’t have any concrete advice beyond “think more closely about the things you say and write”, but that’s neither original nor specific to this case.
I once had a compiler that threw up an error at “void main()” and forced me to use “int main()” instead...
Yes, C99 specifies that main() should be of type int, and most modern compilers will flag void main() as an error. This wasn’t always the case, and some compilers may still let you get away with it.
Do you react similarly to all instances in which people try to correct other people’s usage? Or only some, and if so, which sorts? In other words, corrections of which of the following do you consider pedantry/elitism, and which do you think are justified:
Spelling
Grammar
Style
Cliches, awkward constructions, etc. (e.g. Orwell’s complaints)
Incorrect usage of terminology
Other?
I don’t mean this as a rebuttal; I’m genuinely curious about your opinion on descriptive vs. prescriptive language rules.
I’m pretty descriptivist. In terms of whether I consider a thing to be justified or elitism, it entirely depends on context. If someone makes a statement and your complaint about that statement is imprecise use of the word precision, then you are being pedantic, and not actually addressing the relevant statement. Similarly, frowning on people’s (debatable)misuse of words like comprise serves no purpose other than to display your greater knowledge (ie higher status) of definition and minutiae. On the other hand, if someone tips lik thes wen triing tu comminicate I view correction as fully justified. Similarly, if talking about the specifics of a field where jargon is to be expected and understood by all parties, I don’t mind someone correcting someone’s understanding of bytes or bits, or whether something is an ape or a hominid.
Fair enough. The following, then, is a rebuttal to your top-level comment.
If you use two words interchangeably, whose meanings are originally distinct, then you lose the ability to use your word choice in this case to indicate one of the meanings and not the other. Meanwhile, your audience is no longer able to divine, from your word choice, which thing you mean. This weakens your ability to communicate effectively.
I am then making the additional, empirical claim that a common cause of these sorts of mistakes is people using words or phrases without being aware of the specifics of their meaning. In the case of word substitution, the writer is not aware that the words mean different things; or is not aware that a word has multiple, possibly opposed, meanings; or has no idea what a saying or expression really means. This may not be the only cause of misuse[1] of any of the words or phrases I mentioned, but it’s one cause, and I think a common one.
The follow-up claim is that being unaware of distinctions between words (and the concepts to which they refer), or being unaware of the ideas referred to by the phrases you use, is bad for you. That is what I was alluding to with the last two links in my post.
All of this is not to say that in real life, if you made some statement in which you use “accurate” instead of “precise”, my first reaction would be “Now hang on there, my good man, don’t you mean ‘precise’? Take care not to make such embarrassing slips!” I would — silently, almost unconsciously — quickly weigh the likelihood of you intending one meaning vs. the other; situate your word choice in the context of your statement and the surrounding conversation; and in any case we may well not be discussing matters so grave that the distinction even matters. Finally, if I’m still confused and I think it matters, I can just ask for clarification — though I mentioned in my post that this doesn’t always go well, especially if you are in fact not aware that the two words have different meanings in the first place.
There is a difference, however, between that sort of communication and the kind where your intended meaning is completely transparent to me and where you are conveying exactly the ideas you mean to convey, with no ambiguity and no chance of misunderstanding. I am not sure what to make of the attitude that this is not, all else being equal, preferable to the other sort. (Note: I am not ascribing such an attitude to you.)
That being said, though, I would prefer not to recapitulate any of the standard descriptivist vs. prescriptivist arguments here, not least because I don’t think I have anything particularly new to add to that debate. I only hope to have clarified that my problem isn’t with incorrect[2] usage per se; it’s with the consequences of this particular cause of incorrect usage.
[1] By “misuse” here I only mean “divergence from accepted or standard usage”; this isn’t to imply that such divergence is automatically “wrong” in an absolute sense.
[2] Same here.
I think you may have a legitimate point but agree with the thread OP that your examples are poor.
You stated the source of my disagreement yourself: “Cargo cult language [can be recognized with] the question: “What do you mean by that?”.”
[Warning, obvious statement incoming]
I believe that in most cases where someone says precise in a place where the word accurate would make more sense, while they may be hiding some hidden connotative inferences (as is the human norm), they do have a meaning in mind, the concept of accuracy.
Thus they can answer your question “what do you mean by that,” although their answer may be missing some of the incoherent inferences they were making, like “in a sciencey way!”
Certainly they can answer the question. The indication of cargo cult language, as I conceive it, isn’t necessarily that the speaker can’t answer the question, but that it’s asked in the first place (cf. my third example); in other words, there’s a suspicion that the actual meaning of the word/phrase the speaker used does not match what they intended to say (because they don’t actually know what the word/phrase means).
Under that interpretation, “it often isn’t clear whether the speaker really knows what he’s saying and means to say it or is simply parroting.” is a false dichotomy.
The speaker can know what they mean to say, accidentally say something different, and not be simply parroting. They may even be understood because e.g. using accuracy and precision as synonyms is common vernacular.
In all cases 1-6 - descriptive is scientific, productive, interesting while prescriptive is without evidence, harmful and boring.
Downvoted for overgeneralization.
SaidAchmiz asked for an opinion and I gave an honest one. I may be wrong in the view of some other people but that is still my honest opinion. It is not an overgeneralization as I believe that in all cases, in all situations, at all times the descriptive approach is preferable to the prescriptive one.
The descriptive approach may well be universally preferable to the prescriptive one, but that does not make it more scientific, productive, and interesting. It need not be preferable in every respect.