Lauren Schellenberg
I was listening to episode 32 of Slate’s Lexicon Valley on which linguist John McWhorter was talking about how much he hated the word veggies. That’s an odd word to hate, I thought. It seems pretty innocuous. So I got to thinking about the words that I hate. There are many of them, but I always have a good reason:
Some for misogyny – hysterical
Some for cacophony – bucolic
Some for imagery – pustule
Some for pedantry – copacetic
And some for solecism – irregardless
As I was congratulating myself on how very logical I was in my loathing of certain words, it struck me that I hate the word Legos.
Legos.
With an s.
I’ve always hated it. As a child, I would correct my classmates whenever I heard it.
Hey Lauren, do you want to play with Legos?
Legos? What are Legos? Ohhhh, do you mean Lego?
What a charming child I was.
Now I know that prescriptivism is bad. I have no issue saying literally to mean figuratively or saying that something ‘begs the question’ when I mean that it ‘leads to the question’. It does not bother me when someone uses effect instead of affect (though I will admit to still feeling a slight twinge at ‘he borrowed it to me’ – ugh). But there’s something special about Legos. I hate it so much that my heart beats faster when I hear it.
McWhorter and I are not the only ones with irrational hatred.
I have a friend who will always correct me when I say, ‘I feel bad’.
You feel badly, she’ll say
I’ll say no, I don’t feel madly or sadly, why would I feel badly? Besides, ‘feel’ is a copula and you use adject-
But she will not listen. She simply hates it and cannot stand to hear it.
When I was teaching grade one, my class was violently divided on the pronunciation of the word ‘the’. Half the class insisted vehemently that it was pronounced with a long e, with the other half saying ‘no, stupid, it’s a schwa’. I’m paraphrasing. Despite my best efforts to explain that both were correct depending on the situation, every time I finished a story with thee end, I would receive a chorus of whispered thuh ends and accusatory looks. Calm down Camryn-with-a-Y, I’d think to myself, why do you care so much about the pronunciation of one little word? Of course, then someone would ask if they could play with the Legos, and I’d have to face the fact that I wasn’t any more rational than a first-grader.
So my questions:
Why do certain words turn us into prescriptivist monsters?
What word is it for you?
Deborah Cameron, one of my favourite linguists, as I have said quite often in this space, wrote Verbal Hygiene (1995) for YOU, Lauren! I hope you read it sometime. Here is a link to someone’s blog post about it https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/verbal-hygiene/ …there is an embedded link to a good 2012-ish keynote by Cameron in which she explains why “verbal hygiene” is not the same thing as “prescriptivism”. The question, as she points out, is—why do we care so much? It’s your question in this post. And it’s one of this course’s main questions.
I will not be so rash and foolish as to venture any answers!
I wonder if it’s just aural arbitrariness? Like why is it that certain melodies or instruments can make us cringe instantaneously? I’m not sure if there’s a rational answer (though, admittedly, I haven’t looked into this whatsoever). Or is a judgement thing re: correctness? Or both?
In the human context, “arbitrariness” has little or no significance. We NEED meaning. If it isn’t there, we create it. So, no. It’s all early conditioning, donchathink?
“Slacks” is so 1950 but today we wear and say “leggings” or “jeggings” don’t know which is worse. I always hated when people say “Caf” for cafeteria or that they are going on a “Tim’s” run. In my language “She:kon” is used as a greeting (which means more or still) and is a part of a formal greeting which is “Ske:kon kenh skennenko:wa” (Are you still at great peace) I much prefer the simple “Kwe” which is a shorten version of “kwe Kwe, oh niiohtonhatie” (Hi, how you doing?) (Bet you read that in your Joey Tribbiani voice, I know I did.)
Kahsennenhawe Mandy Jacobs