I've answered your question, now I have one for you: Did you even glance at the link?
I'm sorry, these epistemologically relativist arguments lead to utterly absurd conclusions. How does wikipedia work at all? How can we ever make judgements about anything?
It's bad Cartesianism. Just because we can't know something absolutely doesn't mean we can't know anything. Just because language changes doesn't mean there's no such thing as correct and incorrect usage.
That also doesn't mean "anything goes" either, obviously, since we do clearly speak a mutually comprehensible dialect through no intentional coordination. It's an interesting subject! You could stand to have some curiosity about its actual mechanics, there's a lot to be learned that is invisible to you if you've already decided how it should work.
I could engage your other points, but why bother
> Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Language is indeed consciously shaped. Look at the history of Italian. It doesn't just happen, and Wikipedia definitely doesn't just happen.
And if you disagree with Orwell, fine, just don't trot him out in support of your points. Which was my original point.
But I'm not trolling you or intentionally fucking with you or anything. You are fundamentally wrong about how language works and maybe what language even is, and you're extremely hostile to genuine attempts to engage with that so I'm gonna take off. Good luck with it.
Calling you a troll was my most charitable reading of your obtuseness, because if you weren't willfully so, you must be either unconsciously so, or, well, just bad at reading.
If I'm a phrenologist, so is Orwell, and newspeak is not a valid analogy.
That's what language is. That's how language works.
I love Orwell, but he was flat wrong in that essay. He was playing at being a linguist and showing his ignorance.
Dictionaries generally explicitly do not define what is correct, they describe what is in use (often with notes about the contexts of common use).
> style guides
Style guides do not define what is correct for the language, they define what is correct for those adopting the style, they are intentionally by design more limited than what is acceptable in the language to serve, for adopting institutions, the function of providing a common style (that’s why they are called style guides, rather than language guides.)
He introduced American spelling and American English.
By constrast the Oxford English Dictionary was created by lexicographers intent on mapping the usage of English across space and time, they created multiple entries for each form | usage of root words and added copious notes (in the full multi volume OED editions) regarding first usage, alternate spellings, regional changes, etc.
The OED is a descriptive dictionary.
Yes, he was.
And while some of his reforms caught on and remain in use to this day, his approach to dictionaries generally did not. When I said dictionaries do not do that, the verb tense was significant.
Webster lived 200 years ago, and today prescriptivism is rejected by the overwhelming majority of linguists, because it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what language is. Prescriptivism is about as well supported as phrenology, and shares many of its discriminatory goals. It was something people made up, that turned out to not make any actual sense, and that was subsequently abandoned by almost everyone.
Webster can instruct people on how to correctly write "Webster Language". But he cannot instruct people on how to correctly write English. English is whatever its users say and write. No other sensible definition exists.
I sure haven't stated "my position" in any of my previous comments. But assuming it refers to common english, I'm reminded of another "1984" concept: doublethink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
Compare this:
> common english is Newspeak
with this:
> War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength
The similarity is uncanny.
> A better source might be
... the actual book being discussed?
> https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Exactly which part of Orwell's opinion did you find relevant to this discussion and how does it relate to yours? This is missing from your comment.
> which is essentially what you and others argue for,
Please don't put words in my or anyone else's mouth to make your point. It's extremely disrespectful.
> The similarity is uncanny.
Is it extremely disrespectful to point out that your previous comment is defending the position that "to comprise is to compose"?
Second, the phrase is "comprised of," not "to comprise."
Finally, I'd also like to point out that the editor and all people in this thread clearly knows how the phrase is used today. What's the point of arguing about the correctness of a phrase when it does a perfect job of conveying meaning?
See this is what I mean when I say that your position is closer to the Newspeak ethos. What's wrong with ungood, after all? It does a perfect job of conveying meaning.
The Newspeak language eradicates words on the basis that they're redundant. The Wikipedia editor went to eradicate a phrase using the same justification. There's an obvious parallel here.
> It does a perfect job of conveying meaning.
This is a fact that holds true regardless of one's opinion. Yet, you're fallaciously framing this as an opinion to make it look like Oceania and I hold the same opinion.
When it comes to my actual opinion, I favor languages spoken as is. Newspeak, on the others hand, is an artificially restricted one. The false equivalence you made between these two conflicting positions can only be explained as doublethink.
Why people think they're entitled to their own ignorance is quite beyond me.
Second, you say Orwell isn't a linguist, and language just happens, but then you explicitly reference his fictional account of a prescribed language. Clearly, Esperanto is a prescribed language. So prescribed languages do exist, and political forces can shape languages, you just don't think that happens with English. Well I do. People reference so-called "descriptive" dictionaries and grammars, yet don't those texts themselves inherently acquire a prescriptive force, insofar as they originate at elite institutions like Oxford and Cambridge and UChicago? Just as Dante's works acquired a prescriptive force for the Italian that was once highly regional, but needed standardization to support the nation-state.
I think descriptivism is an incredibly naive position to take when talking about modern languages that have agglomerated for explicit social, political, and economic projects, and I think that was Orwell's point.
Similar to David Foster Wallace's essay on English, we can either naively push the descriptivist line, or we can accept that "the powers that be" do indeed shape our language, and try to have our own voices heard, for what English ought to be.
So we can rail against the Newspeak that some editor on Wikipedia is supposedly forcing on us. We can say it's literally 1984. It's ungood! And we can happily return to talking about grokking and gatekeeping and unaliving, and undocumented immigrants, and unhoused people, and utilizing the new library, believing these words are good because they happened and that they happened because they're good.
You're misreading me: I'm saying that English didn't come into existence by fiat, and that it doesn't evolve through fiat most of the time. English, being a natural language as opposed to a constructed one, evolves naturally.
> Well I do. People reference so-called "descriptive" dictionaries and grammars, yet don't those texts themselves inherently acquire a prescriptive force, insofar as they originate at elite institutions like Oxford and Cambridge and UChicago?
That doesn't change the fact they're descriptive. It also doesn't change the fact linguistics is descriptive.
> I think descriptivism is an incredibly naive position to take when talking about modern languages that have agglomerated for explicit social, political, and economic projects, and I think that was Orwell's point.
Well, you can get a degree in linguistics and learn what "descriptivism" actually means, then, because you certainly don't know it now.
You seem to be arguing that descriptivism is just what linguistics "does", therefore it does not inherently contradict prescriptivism? Because they have two separate roles. And if descriptivists stayed in their lane, and allowed prescription where obviously necessary (like when teaching a language) then we wouldn't be having this argument in the first place.
But if descriptivists turn around and say "therefore thou shalt not prescribe"، then we do have a problem, and descriptivists are indeed naive, they are the real prescribers of an ill-conceived political program.
A better source might be George Orwell's actual, explicit opinions on politics and the English language:
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Orwell certainly did not take an "anything goes" approach to language, which is essentially what you and others argue for, in the mistaken belief that you're somehow striking a blow at totalitarianism. From my perspective, your position is much closer to the Newspeak ethos than that of someone who actually cares about correct usage.