alexpgp | On being the Grammar Police...

One of the occupational hazards of acquiring facility with language is the temptation to feel superior to the 95% of people out there who aren't as gifted, linguistically, as one imagines oneself to be. I had a brief fling at being a full-fledged member of the Grammar Police back in my days working at Plenum, and was fortunate to have moved on to a more mellow view of the world.

There is an interesting community here on LJ called

grammar_mavens. I find it to be an interesting source of useful tidbits from time to time, but increasingly, I am finding that I am developing an allergy to people who have pet language usage peeves. An interesting (for me) discussion has "erupted" recently, which I am promoting to an entry.

The background is this: In a couple of recent posts, members posting in

grammar_mavens have described their intolerance of the phrase "I could care less," calling attention to the logical fallacy in the words (writes

idadebeautreux: "I want to answer to them, 'So why don't you?' If you COULD care less, then you care SOME. You mean you couldn't care less!")

In a comment to a very similar post by

amanda3, I responded with:

Please go have your sarcasm meter serviced, as it seems to be seriously on the fritz.

Your analysis seems to stop at the logical fallacy of stating one "could care less" when in fact, one could not do so. Had your sarcasm meter been fully operational, it would have kicked in, hinting that perhaps an implied "as if" might be associated with the phrase (i.e., "As if there is something in the world that I care less about").

Until you do get your sarcasm meter repaired, please be aware that you may experience the same reaction to people who say things such as, "I should be so lucky!" or "Tell me about it!" The same principle applies, so please do not allow any new pet peeves to develop. There are entirely too many of those critters running around.

In a separate comment,

idadebeautreux dismissed the sarcasm argument, saying:

Except....most people don't use it sarcastically. Most people say it because they are too obtuse to think about what they are actually saying. I sympathize with you, amanda3 - in fact, I whined about this exact same pet peeve of mine a few entries ago. Anyone who considers people who use the phrase "I could care less" as speaking sarcastically are crediting those speakers with FAR more intelligence than is their due.

To which I replied:

Perhaps you are correct. However, I would prefer to credit someone with being smarter than they might actually be than to presume that anyone who uses the phrase "I could care less" is a mindless dolt incapable of sarcasm. In the former case, one loses little or nothing if the assumption is wrong; in the latter, all sorts of awkward results are possible (and probably inevitable).

In the final analysis, very few of us think very hard about what we write. We depend, instead, on mimicry of what we have read, or heard, or had drilled into us over the years.

For example, consider my use of the phrase "in the final analysis" to start the previous paragraph? What analysis am I talking about, by whom, and what's so "final" about it? I really couldn't tell you. To tell the truth, I didn't give it much thought when I wrote it because the usage works (albeit there are probably better ways to start that sentence). The same can be said for your use of "exact same" to describe your pet peeve: Despite the redundancy of the collocation, the usage works.

The same courtesy, I think, should be extended to those who use such expressions as "I could care less." Wouldn't you agree?

This reminds me of a joke I believe I heard in some translation context (perhaps on Lantra-L).

A linguistics professor is giving a lecture to a class of freshmen and is trying to make a point about how different languages go about expressing a negative.

"In some languages, a single negation is sufficient to denote a negative, as is the case in English," says the prof.

"In others, such as Russian, negatives are expressed by using two or more negations in a sentence," he continues.

"Obviously," he adds, almost as an afterthought, "it is impossible to express a negative using only positive expressions."

Upon which a voice from the back of the lecture hall cries out: "Yeah!... Right!"

* * *The day went quickly. I must admit I was sidetracked by Starswarm, by Jerry Pournelle, which I started reading last night and finished between pages of translation today. I have 12 pages or so of this set of standards to do, after which I must turn my attention to completing the newspaper article for client T in Chicago, both due out by Tuesday morning. Then there is the 0-page assignment from client M in Houston, due Wednesday, which I have not yet even looked at.

Time to go to sleep.

Cheers...