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Is They Is - Or Is They Isn't?

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29 Jun 2011, 5:35 pm

"Is you, or isn't you my constituancy?"-Huey Long

The OP's use of the phrase is merely "a return to normalcy"-Herbert Hoover

Or, perhaps, I've "misunderestimated"-G.W, Bush, him.

U.S politicians have long run afoul of the mother tounge.



Sand
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29 Jun 2011, 5:39 pm

Philologos wrote:
Sand wrote:

To propose that the average piece of writing should be done in the language emitted by characters in Pogo or Lil* Abner is an interesting clue to your tendencies for obfuscation.


You have said that you are not up to speed in Finnish. Here you again COMPLETELY miss the point of a passage of English in clear - in which I made no such proposal. Why would I?

The question is - is there a language you CAN read?


Since the bulk of your posts are linguistic puzzles with obscure terminology well distributed throughout like gravel embedded in angel food cake to flaunt your familiarity with archaic terminology or just plain lumpy obscurity I gather your optimism about your readers' fascination with literary challenges is quite overblown. To present an idea it is a reasonable method to speak clearly and simply in the generally accepted vernacular. It's something a linguistic scholar should take very seriously.



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30 Jun 2011, 6:15 am

Philologos wrote:
Fowler was better than many another of that genre. But ultimately, those are Miss Manners - descriptively useful, sought after by the Socialized as justification, useful to those who want or need to "fit in" to a particular group. The AUTHORITY was and is and remains the individual speaker.

It's got nothing to do with trying to fit in; my point was that the question writer's grammar is so bad that the meaning is obscured. It's hard to work out whether he means, "Are they, or are they not?" or, "They are or they are not", or any other possible combination.

The authority is not, and never has been, the individual speaker. If it were then there would be as many books on grammar as there are speakers of any given language. Applied more broadly, each group and sub-group would have to have their own dictionary, to handle both the slang terms and atypical useage of words particular to that group. In any case, even if people are using Fowler's Modern English Usage as justification for linguistic cliques, the purpose of the book remains to encourage clarity of expression -- something the question "Is they is, or is they isn't?" lacks.



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30 Jun 2011, 9:29 am

You miss a few points.

First off, of course there is a standard separate from the individual for the language of a community, be that 18th century British sailors, Bosnian farmers, Oxford dons, or Malay poets. Attention to that standard enables one to fit in and facilitates, as you point out, communication with that group. Of course, my tendency to follow the linguistic norms of Anglic Liberal Arts academia has in certain cases - see slimeballs from Sand - impeded communication here, where many do not have access to that set of norms. I am always ready to tempt a translation for those who inquire.

Secondly, even such communal standards do not exist independently, but are in fact simply the areas where the usage of individuals in the community overlaps. Just as my annoying colleague points out there is no suich thing as a Frenchman, so no one person speaks Standard English. Rather, many people who demonstrably speak differently may be classed as within the bounds of Standard English. To the descriptive linguist, then, the focus is and must be the usage of the individual, which alone is directly available.

Thirdly, the prescriptivist can and will do the Miss Manners thing and list the dos and don't that will get you into or out of the community.

Fourthly, go talk to the artists. Every serious user of language is an artist, whether they think of themselves that way or not. If you could only have heard that guy in my first year Arabic class! You will find that much of art gets its effect by pushing the envelope of the norms. The inclusion in a stretch of academic Anglic of a wording that you just ain't a-gonna find in the mouth of your run of the litter academic provides an emphasis that will be perceived at least by those whose experience and range of social dialect approximate those of the speaker.



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30 Jun 2011, 9:37 am

Philologos wrote:
You miss a few points.

First off, of course there is a standard separate from the individual for the language of a community, be that 18th century British sailors, Bosnian farmers, Oxford dons, or Malay poets. Attention to that standard enables one to fit in and facilitates, as you point out, communication with that group. Of course, my tendency to follow the linguistic norms of Anglic Liberal Arts academia has in certain cases - see slimeballs from Sand - impeded communication here, where many do not have access to that set of norms. I am always ready to tempt a translation for those who inquire.

Secondly, even such communal standards do not exist independently, but are in fact simply the areas where the usage of individuals in the community overlaps. Just as my annoying colleague points out there is no suich thing as a Frenchman, so no one person speaks Standard English. Rather, many people who demonstrably speak differently may be classed as within the bounds of Standard English. To the descriptive linguist, then, the focus is and must be the usage of the individual, which alone is directly available.

Thirdly, the prescriptivist can and will do the Miss Manners thing and list the dos and don't that will get you into or out of the community.

Fourthly, go talk to the artists. Every serious user of language is an artist, whether they think of themselves that way or not. If you could only have heard that guy in my first year Arabic class! You will find that much of art gets its effect by pushing the envelope of the norms. The inclusion in a stretch of academic Anglic of a wording that you just ain't a-gonna find in the mouth of your run of the litter academic provides an emphasis that will be perceived at least by those whose experience and range of social dialect approximate those of the speaker.


And with all that, you (on record here) totally dismissed Joyce's "Ulysses".



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30 Jun 2011, 1:46 pm

Sand wrote:
And with all that, you (on record here) totally dismissed Joyce's "Ulysses".


Are you sure you are not thinking of Finnegan's Wake? Ulysses does not connect with anything I said that I can see.

As for Ulysses - I read it. I suffered. I rolled my eyes.

All very well for those whose mint it fits or those who can take Joyce at his own valuation. But I class it with most of Picasso.



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30 Jun 2011, 5:04 pm

Philologos wrote:
Sand wrote:
And with all that, you (on record here) totally dismissed Joyce's "Ulysses".


Are you sure you are not thinking of Finnegan's Wake? Ulysses does not connect with anything I said that I can see.

As for Ulysses - I read it. I suffered. I rolled my eyes.

All very well for those whose mint it fits or those who can take Joyce at his own valuation. But I class it with most of Picasso.


An interesting and probably valid expression of your limitations.



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01 Jul 2011, 1:34 am

Sand wrote:
An interesting and probably valid expression of your limitations.


That, of course, is WHY we have the nine. Not the Full Nine [and that one IS inserted to delight me and annoy you, though I indulge myself so less than you assume]. When we keep to social structures that permit the Cooperation and keep the Powervolk and Organizers and Centrifugals in balance, the whole of society benefits from the unique powers of each of the nine, even [though it is hard for me as Tinker/Thinker to see] the Amateurs.

In the termitary in which we have - most of us - lost ourselves, it is the limitations which result from and enable those powers that are most obvious. The Thinker/Tinker seems emotionally crippled and unsocialized, the Organizers are blind to alternatives, the Powervolk do not understand the strength that lies in weakness and pacifism.

You and I - though I at least try, being aware of the problem and the causes - see almost exclusively our complementary limitations.

Fortunately, I have access to Herself, an Aspirant who is most neatly complementary to my pattern - we could really use an energetic in the Inner Circle, but in other respdects we approximate a viable community.