Quote:
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When interacting with friends, I believe it's important to respect the casual qualities of their communication. If I like someone -- let alone, love them -- then I'd rather have them feel comfortable with me than writhe on the tweezers of self-consciousness.
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I couldn't agree more (why isn't it possible to say "I could agree more", btw?). I try not to fight any language battles - particularly in a language which isn't my mother tongue. It is certainly interesting to note, however, how high passions can run concerning the correct use of language.
And I think that isn't only a bad thing; doesn't it show that many people still feel language
does matter?
Yet I think there is a big difference between public and private discourse. In personal contact with people I try to understand what they want to say and wouldn't start any nitpicking - unless I would see a real danger of misunderstanding. In public discourse (journalism, politics...) it's different due to the risk of sloppy language - intentionally or unintentionally - obfuscating truth. That's why teaching good, clear writing - which includes really thinking about what one wants to say - would be very nice. It's certainly not happening at schools where I live.
But I won't start correcting my wife's or my friends' every little slip of grammar; life would become very unpleasant very quickly.
But back to the "care less" problem. I remembered reading a linguist's defence of "I could care less". I thought it was David Crystal, but actually it was Steven Pinker. His
The Language Instinct contains a nice polemic against the "language mavens", and it contains this passage:
Quote:
A tin ear for prosody (stress and intonation) and an obliviousness to the principles of discourse and rhetoric are important tools of the trade for the language maven. Consider an alleged atrocity committed by today’s youth: the expression I could care less. The teenagers are trying to express disdain, the adults note, in which case they should be saying I couldn’t care less. If they could care less than they do, that means that they really do care, the opposite of what they are trying to say. But if these dudes would stop ragging on teenagers and scope out the construction, they would see that their argument is bogus. Listen to how the two versions are pronounced:
[see attached image]
The melodies and stresses are completely different, and for a good reason. The second version is not illogical, it’s sarcastic. The point of sarcasm is that by making an assertion that is manifestly false or accompanied by ostentatiously mannered intonation, one deliberately implies its opposite. A good paraphrase is, “Oh yeah, as if there was something in he world that I care less about.”
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I'm not a native speaker, so I couldn't say if I agree. As an observer I note, however, that there seem to be language experts who have nothing against "I could care less".
And back again to language battles: Prototype semantics (the kind of semantics that claims - to the horror of classical logicians - that a robin is "more bird" than a penguin, for instance) can really spice up a party. You only have to find an item which is not a good example of its category. In German it works very nicely with a mug. Some will say it is a
Tasse, while others will insist that it can never be called a
Tasse but only a
Pott or a
Becher. Usually groups are split in half about this issue, and nobody is willing to compromise. Great fun! What could you use for that game in English?