EVERYONE! I HAVE - I HAVE A QUESTION:

When you read to yourself, by which I mean, not aloud, do you speak the words in your head? Does the punctuation affect how you speak the aforementioned words? Does it change, as it were, your mental intonation?

It does mine. And hence why I have never understood why people have trouble with most punctuation. I can understand the problems with apostrophes. Even hyphens, to a large extent. The difference between single and double quotation marks is something with which I grapple daily and have decided is a case for inventing one's own convention. But these are all punctuation marks which you can't hear when talking. FULL STOPS, commas, ellipses, dashes, and even the dreaded semi-colon, however, are just representations of how people talk. Seriously, what's the deal, world? Is it really that hard? Can't you just listen to the words in your head and *hear* which punctuation mark to use?

Evidently not. And evidently I am some kind of grammar snob who reads too much, though to be honest I do remember a time when I didn't know how to use the semi-colon, but I seemed to develop the ability spontaneously because it's second nature now. But anyway. Punctuational musings aside and ON TO THE BOOK!

I had to re-rate this book from four stars to three. Somehow I didn't find it so funny the second time. The humour seemed forced, and formulaic (the Oxford comma has its place, by the way). Perhaps linguistics has spoiled me. One year of rabid left-wing hippy pot-smoking release-yonder-children-from-the-shackles-of-modern-education descriptivist linguistics lecturers has cured me (almost) completely of any lingering signs of prescriptivism (for all you who remain unconvinced, Stephen Fry and Language Hat will tell you why descriptivists have more fun).

In any case, I've seen curses rained upon Lynne Truss for her 'smug', 'self-righteous' 'linguistic snobbism', but she's a sweetie at heart, I believe. For all her grouchy, unconvinced and unconvincing attempts to paint herself as a not-too-prescriptive-prescriptivist (if that even makes sense), she's just a language lover (to hyphen or not to hyphen?) at heart. Observe:

"... it is a matter for despair to see punctuation chucked out as worthless by people who don't know the difference between "who's" and "whose", and whose bloody automatic 'grammar checker' can't tell the difference either. [hear, hear! MS Word, are you listening?] And despair was the initial impetus for this book. I saw a sign for "Book's" with an apostrophe in it, and something deep inside me snapped; snapped with that melancholy sound you hear in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, like a far-off cable breaking in a mine-shaft [sic]. I know that language moves on. It has to... But I can't help feeling that our punctuation system, which has served the written word with grace and ingenuity for centuries, must not be allowed to disappear without a fight."

And no, it's not just the Cherry Orchard reference that makes my heart go boompity-boomp. No matter how many linguistics lecturers I have, no matter how many blog posts written by celebrities advocating descriptivism I read, I will still share at least some of Ms Truss's sentiments. It's the same feeling of sadness I feel when I contemplate the word 'awesome' and how it can never really encompass all that it used to. The same feeling of tragic loss I experience when I realise that the phrase 'the stuff of magic' is actually kind of funny these days. The same half-smothered regret that is inspired within my soul as I cast around desperately for a synonym for 'random' that doesn't make me sound like an idiotic teen.

It's just nostalgia, pure and simple. Now let us alone, descriptivists.

Perfectly Good Words

I have totally been feeling too randomly lazy to update the past few days. I have literally not had the energy to lift my hands to a keyboard. 'Oh my God', I hear you say; 'why has this totally awesome blogger, like, stopped blogging?' and I'm so like 'um, here's some shit I started writing ages ago because I really can't be bothered comparing Unless and American Pastoral like I was totally planning to do.' So the point of today's post (which is more linguistics than literature, but it's vaguely relevant) is that the semantic shift of modern language has led to what is known as 'lexical gaps', which is the phrase used when there is no word in a language to describe a certain concept. However, my knowledge of linguistics is a little sketchy/amateur, so don't quote me on this.

The words are:
Awesome: the former meaning of this word used to be something similar to 'awe-inspiring'. Now it just means 'great', 'cool', or a slightly superlative form of those or similar phrases. This irritates me no end because there are already a few ways to express this concept of coolness, but there is now no real way to express the feeling of awe that is brought on by something that is so amazing. 'awe-inspiring' is too unwieldy, long and compounded, but 'awesome' only retains its former meaning in certain contexts, such as 'the awesome power of nature'.

Totally: used to mean 'completely', except somehow it had connotations of being even more complete than completely, if that makes sense. Now it doesn't really mean anything, it's just a silly little word inserted into a sentence with no real semantic purpose,a s in the sentence 'I am totally pumped'. Which not only means that a new lexical gap has been created, but that the semantic shift was unnecessary and we have lost the ability to describe a perfectly good concept for no real purpose whatsoever.

Random: probably annoys me even more than the others because it's much harder to find a synonym for. Looking at The Free Dictionary's list of synonyms there is no word which comes close to encompassing all of the marvellous connotations of the word 'random'. Each word on that list only describes one of the facets, or connotations, of this tremendously varied and useful word.

Oh my God: it used to be shocking, because it was 'taking the lord's name in vain' (gasp!) but now it's just become jaded. What do you say now when you're really shocked? 'goodness gracious'? I think not.

Literally: no longer means the thing that is actually written down on the paper, or that is physically occurring, but is just used to add emphasis. In this way, the phrase 'it's literally raining cats and dogs!' doesn't mean that cats and dogs are actually falling from the sky, but that it's raining really, really hard.

One could argue that with all of these examples, it is still possible to use them in their former contexts, but I would argue in return that they will (at least in this era) still be 'tainted' (if I can be permitted such a lingustically-incorrect term) with the connotations that pop culture has given them. If I used the word 'random' in an essay - unless I am extremely careful - I would be laughed out of town.

Lastly, I'm really trying hard not to be prescriptive here. I understand, nay, I believe, that semantic shift happens, that language adapts and changes, and that that's not a bad thing but a fact of life. I'm just registering the fact that, as someone who writes (and not even fiction! Just anything, from book reviews to acrostic poems to instruction manuals), there are a few concepts out there that I can't really use any more without them meaning something different to my intention. Yes, writers have to adapt to that and take it into account, but oh - I just want to talk about stuff clearly and succinctly. Ooh, look! I just used another: 'stuff'. Think of Lady Macbeth's 'Oh, proper stuff!' the stuff of dreams, the stuff of life itself. It doesn't work like that any more.

I'm also aware that this sort of things has been happening for years - centuries! And will continue to happen whatever anyone does. The only thing that endures is change. I'm curious: will the knowledge of these concepts eventually die out as the generations who remember their former use die? Will they become words that must be thought about when read in archaic texts? Will the people of the future not have any word to describe the feeling you have when something is so amazing it moves something within you? Will they simply feel it as one of those nebulous emotions that can't be put into words? Without a word to describe it, is it possible that this concept could just disappear? Could another word jump in to fill its place? Big questions, indeed.

Perfectly good words or phrases that have been destroyed by pop culture

I have totally been feeling too randomly lazy to update the past few days. I have literally not had the energy to lift my hands to a keyboard. 'Oh my God', I hear you say 'why has this totally awesome blog author, like, stopped posting?' and I'm so like 'um, here's some shit I started writing ages ago because I really can't be bothered comparing Unless and American Pastoral like I was totally planning to do.'

So the point of today's post (which is more linguistics than literature, but it sort of links) is that the semantic shift of modern language has led to what is known as 'lexical gaps', which means there is no word in a language to describe a certain concept. However, my knowledge of linguistics is a little sketchy/amateur, so don't quote me on this.

The words are:

Awesome: the former meaning of this word used to be something similar to 'awe-inspiring'. Nw it just means 'great', 'cool', or a slightly superlative form of those or similar phrases. This irritates me no end because there are already a few ways to express this concept of coolness, but there is now no real way to express the feeling of awe that is brought on by something that is so amazing. 'awe-inspiring' is too unwieldy, long and compounded, but 'awesome' only retains its former meaning in certain contexts, such as 'the awesome power of nature'.

Totally: used to mean 'completely', except somehow it had connotations of being even more complete than completely, if that makes sense. Now it doesn't really mean anything, it's just a silly little word inserted into a sentence with no real semantic purpose,a s in the sentence 'I am totally pumped'. Which not only means that a new lexical gap has been created, but that the semantic shift was unnecessary and we have lost the ability to describe a perfectly good concept for no real purpose whatsoever.

Random: probably annoys me even more than the others because it's much harder to find a synonym for. Looking at The Free Dictionary's list of synonyms there is no word which comes close to encompassing all of the marvellous connotations of the word 'random'. Each word on that list only describes one of the facets, or connotations, of this tremendously varied and useful word.

Oh my God: it used to be shocking, because it was 'taking the lord's name in vain' (gasp!) but now it's just become jaded. What do you say now when you're really shocked? 'goodness gracious'? I think not.

Literally: no longer means the thing that is actually written down on the paper, or that is physically occurring, but is just used to add emphasis. In this way, the phrase 'it's literally raining cats and dogs!' doesn't mean that cats and dogs are actually falling from the sky, but that it's raining really, really hard.

One could argue that with all of these examples, it is still possible to use them in their former contexts, but I would argue in return that they will (at least in this era) still be 'tainted' (if I can be permitted such a lingustically-incorrect term) with the connotations that pop culture has given them. If I used the word 'random' in an essay - unless I am extremely careful - I would be laughed out of town.

Lastly, I'm really trying hard not to be prescriptive here. I understand, nay, I believe, that semantic shift happens, that language adapts and changes, and that that's not a bad thing but a fact of life. I'm just registering the fact that, as someone who writes (and not even fiction! Just anything, from book reviews to acrostic poems to instruction manuals), there are a few concepts out there that I can't really use any more without them meaning something different to my intention. Yes, writers have to adapt to that and take it into account, but oh - I just want to talk about stuff clearly and succinctly. Ooh, look! I just used another: 'stuff'. Think of Lady Macbeth's 'Oh, proper stuff!' the stuff of dreams, the stuff of life itself. It doesn't work like that any more.

I'm curious: will the knowledge of these concepts eventually die out as the generations who remember their former use die? Will they become words that must be thought about when read in archaic texts? Will the people of the future not have any word to describe the feeling you have when something is so amazing it moves something within you? Will they simply feel it as one of those nebulous emotions that can't be put into words? Could this concept just disappear? Could another word jump in to fill its place?

Big questions, indeed.