Says Who?
A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words
Anne Curzan, PhD 2024 Beaverton Lib 428 CUR
When someone tells Anne Curzan about an immutable law of English grammar, or a rigid definition or a word, she often responds with a scholarly "says who?"
Language isn't chained immutably to a rocky wall; it continues to change, one sentence or exclamation or document at a time. Words are wings, and as the conceptual air around us changes, so do the metaphorical wings that speakers and writers and performers use to dance and fly to new ideas and expressions. The best of us can convey the two preceding sentences in one or two words.
This 33 chapter book provides many examples, too many to summarize on a web page. She skewers purists, gatekeepers, and grammandos, a portmanteau of "grammar" and "commando". That said, she did not fancy words like "portmanteau" because the concept can be conveyed more effectively with ordinary English words.
The most important take-away is that language is for sharing information and ideas, using shared vocabulary between speakers and writers, listeners and readers. The goal is to inform, educate, sympathize on shared linguistic ground, enlarging that ground for all, one memorable idea at a time.
I won't even attempt to summarize chapters. Chapter 4 "pc" language: why emotions run high is about the respect that facilitates expression, listening, and mutual understanding; if language gets in the way of these goals, why bother to speak or listen? Example: Hispanic, Latino, Latina, Latinx ... the author and others prefer "latine" (lah-teen). I'll try to remember that, though the high pitch second syllable gets mangled by my semi-deaf ears.
Homonyms are another trap. During a class, Dr. Curzon discussed the past tense of the verb "drag", sometimes expressed as "drug" instead of 'dragged". She asked her class "how many of you are drug users", realized what she had actually said, then recanted "Never mind! I don't want to know." Her students thought linguistics might not be boring.
Many more short lessons. I hope some lessons remain in my brain. They won't all fit on this page.