Linguists?
Sep. 5th, 2008 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
From the BBC news magazine:
"Tesco is changing its checkout signs after coming under criticism from linguists for using "less" rather than "fewer". But it's not just huge, multinational supermarkets that get confused about this grammatical point. The grammatical question of fewer versus less has been raising the hackles of plain English speakers for years."
I see two errors in this excerpt.
(Please note that I'm not saying that there should be no rules in English; that would be ridiculous. What I'm saying is that some of what are claimed as rules -- like less vs fewer, not splitting an infitive, not ending a sentence with a preposition, etc -- are meaningless, hallowed neither by usage tradition nor by innate sense, and frankly pathetic.)
"Tesco is changing its checkout signs after coming under criticism from linguists for using "less" rather than "fewer". But it's not just huge, multinational supermarkets that get confused about this grammatical point. The grammatical question of fewer versus less has been raising the hackles of plain English speakers for years."
I see two errors in this excerpt.
- First, it would be more accurate to say that Tesco has come under criticism not from linguists, but from pedants. (Some of whom may also be linguists, or at least think of themselves as such, but that's not what characterizes them in this context.)
- Second, plain English speakers couldn't give half an etiolated toss about fewer vs less, because they care about clarity of communication rather than smug pseudo-intellectual one-upmanship about fanciful and arbitrary grammatical "rules".
(Please note that I'm not saying that there should be no rules in English; that would be ridiculous. What I'm saying is that some of what are claimed as rules -- like less vs fewer, not splitting an infitive, not ending a sentence with a preposition, etc -- are meaningless, hallowed neither by usage tradition nor by innate sense, and frankly pathetic.)
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Let me guess: this is the kind of nonsense up with which you will not put?
More seriously, I don't think there's much pretention (which Google Chrome wants me to spell with an 's') involved in all this. It's a question of where one wants to draw the line with respect to adopting errors into acceptable usage.
To say "ten items or less" is clear only for the same reason that "ten items or lighter" or "ten items or smaller" would be equally clear. It is still a type error. Type errors are not generally meaningless at all, so if you want to argue that this one is you'd need to explain why.
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Date: 2008-09-05 11:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-09-05 11:17 am (UTC)And of what you count as "errors". This is a pretty fertile area for pretension1 to creep in, whether self-aware or not.
So in this case I don't think it is an error at all. Usage of "less" to cover count quantities as well as continuous ones is sufficently widespread and historical that to claim that it has a canonical meaning that excludes counts is nonsensical.
I don't know enough about type theory to really address that point, except to say that English is clearly pretty weakly typed in places -- so it seems to me that while sometimes type errors are not meaningless, in places where a putative type error doesn't actually have any effect on interpreted meaning of the phrase, it then is indeed meaningless.
1 I believe Google Chrome is correct2. "Pretention" is AFAIK just a legal term meaning trying to claim sthg that you have no real right to.
2 FSVO "correct" as per larger discussion.
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Date: 2008-09-05 10:54 am (UTC)Re: Points granted but
Date: 2008-09-05 11:26 am (UTC)Re: Points granted but
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Date: 2008-09-05 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 11:33 am (UTC)Pesonally I feel that usage should be our arbiter.
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Date: 2008-09-05 12:46 pm (UTC)Would that we could differentiate between 'formal book language' and fluid usage.
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Date: 2008-09-05 01:46 pm (UTC)If Tesco influences a large number of peple to shift their usage, so be it: other people can always set up a counter-meme if they feel that strongly about it. Which they are doing, as this story evidences: so let them fight it out, and we'll see who's won in a few decades' time.
My own feeling though is that there is no real point or virtue in pressing the superiority of one usage over another: the one that people are happiest to use and to understand will eventually triumph.
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Date: 2008-09-05 02:53 pm (UTC)That said, Less versus Fewer does not come into that category. The fact that "less" is commonly used to mean "fewer" is not because of the laudable vivacity of the English language, it is because so little effort is put into teaching even rudimentary English grammar in British schools, that most people genuinely do not understand that there is a difference. Americans are generally much better educated in English Grammar than most British people are (and I really don't like having to admit that).
Saying "Less items" is just as wrong as saying "How much items have you got there?" or "How many water does that bucket hold?" just because it is commonly misused and sounds more familiar to our ears does not make it correct.
The other thing is, there is a place for formality and there is a place for colloquialism. To my mind, a large company writing signage or documentation does have some kind of duty to check such output for correctness. Sometimes, they may choose to use a non-standard form of either grammar or spelling for effect; to make it seem more trendy and/or American ("Drive Thru" and "Lite" for example"). I don't like that either, but it is different than simple carelessness.
The value and rigidity of linguistic rules is arguable, obviously, as we are demonstrating, but to dismiss people who value the distinctions in meaning that are lost when language is used imprecisely as "smug pseudo-intellectuals" whose ideas are "frankly pathetic" is not only unfair, but is does nothing to back up your case.
Also, I see that lower down, you have used the concept of competing "memes" to support your contention that popular usage makes something correct, or if not correct then more valid than strict-usage arguments put forward by a minority. Personally, I find the idea of memes to be a superficially interesting way of thinking about concepts, but one which is ultimately completely and utterly specious. Sayings and quotations are often subject to drift, so that a misquote is sometimes the most recognisable version of a famous quotation. It will never be the correct quote, but (if you are lucky), the semantic drift that accompanies it might make the new saying more useful or apposite than the original. Conversely, you may lose the point of the original altogether, and end up with a woolly mixed-metaphor that is only still in use because it is a recognisable cliche.
So while I see your point, I don't entirely agree with you. ;-)
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Date: 2008-09-05 03:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-09-05 03:58 pm (UTC)As you can deduce, I think quite the opposite. I think it's fundamental to the evolution of language that a sufficient weight of usage defines acceptability. You might have seen my point about "you" for the second person singular pronoun: that was once thought incorrect, but now it would be distinctly eccentric to claim it so. Usage doesn't remain fixed at what it was when the words entered the language, and it's by the process of "misuse" and acceptance that these shifts take place. If the notion of correctness doesn't move with them, then it's a sterile concept.
I also think of memes as a useful concept rather than anything more concrete, but it's in just this kind of thing where they find that usefulness. Many people are by now aware that some say "10 items or less", others "fewer". If over time we observe that one of these versions has come to dominate over the other, then we can characterize that as that meme having won. Whether the winner is more or less acceptable to academic consideration is irrelevant: if people continue to prefer "less", in time "fewer" will sound as quaint as "thou", however many arguments are mounted for its historical correctness.
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Date: 2008-09-05 05:27 pm (UTC)Bravo.
Americans are generally much better educated in English Grammar than most British people are (and I really don't like having to admit that).
It's true. But they have *different* rules, of course, in many cases.
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Date: 2008-09-05 04:53 pm (UTC)Does the fact that it makes me steadily more inclined to leap over the barrier, find the bloody computer and change it myself, screaming "You're a fucking school! Do you not have a single fucking dictionary, or one member of staff who gives a damn about spelling!" mark me out as a tragic anorak-wearing pedant?
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Date: 2008-09-05 05:16 pm (UTC)But if it was a genuinely established variant spelling (eg. realise for realize) that you just happen not to prefer, then such a reaction would indeed be inappropriate.
Saying that, consensus about spelling usage seems to be more easily reached than consensus about grammatical usage -- I suspect because variant spelling isn't apparent in speech, only in writing.
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Date: 2008-09-05 05:16 pm (UTC)In this case, though, the wording doesn't bother me, because I don't read it as '10 items or fewer items', I read it as '10 items or less shopping'. In my mind, there's an invisible comma - '10 items, or less.'
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Date: 2008-09-05 05:32 pm (UTC)Elsewhere on here I've used the example of the word "you", which used to just mean the second person plural. Gradually it also absorbed the second-person-singular meaning of "thou", in just the same way that "less" is currently absorbing the meaning of "fewer" in this context. In time, saying "10 items or fewer" will sound as quaint as "thou" does now. People back in the C18 complained about this misuse of "you", but wouldst thou prefer to drag modern English back to the defeated usage?
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Date: 2008-09-06 12:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-08 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-06 01:46 am (UTC)It may well be that the distinction arose late in historical use precisely to express a difference. Why lose a distinction just on the claim "who cares, we all get it"? On that standard, we can use "uninterested" and "disinterested" to mean the same thing, and lose a word from the language; "continuous" and "continual" may well once have been equivalent, but now they're not -- not to me and many other people who like fine distinctions.
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Date: 2008-09-08 11:23 am (UTC)I don't think that the distinction between "less" and "fewer" is a significant one: it's a distinction only of usage ("one should be used with counts, the other with quantities"), not of meaning. After all, we're all perfectly happy to say "more cookies" but also "more water".
So if people wish to maintain the distinction themselves, for aesthetic reasons, that's absolutely fine: but I don't think they have a case for attempting to enforce it on others.
"Uninterested / disinterested" etc I feel are worth fighting over, because they can be used to express genuinely different meanings. But I don't think that's true of "less" and "fewer".
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Date: 2008-09-06 08:54 am (UTC)But reading some of the comments has got me thinking and now I want to see where it leads.
- Suppose we conceptualise language as a game
- Games have rules, so does language
- But where most games have instructions, language does not
- So, as you say, the rules are defined by usage, and ultimately if a variant is used enough it can become legitimate even if it wasn't before
- But then at some point people have started trying to codify the rules (this is a good idea if you think of language as a game - why would you play a game if you don't know the rules? This is why I hate mao)
- But not everyone (indeed possibly not even a majority of people) reads the rules, so the previous mechanism of change persists
- Perhaps codification has not been going for long enough. Eventually natural linguistic change will leave such attempts in the dust. Result? Two languages, I guess. Probably the codified version will end up, like latin, used only in formal contexts
Anyway, that was a bit rambly. I'll finish by saying that I find it interesting that language-lovers would die in a ditch defending some archaic rule, when the very best thing about language is in fact its ability to evolve.
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Date: 2008-09-08 11:28 am (UTC)French is a bit different (and Dutch, from what
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Date: 2008-09-06 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-06 09:25 am (UTC)If your argument is that it's only wrong because of a subjective and arbitrary set of rules say it is, then you've just placed your stake in a arbitrary position on a sliding scale, ranging from "Anyone who utters or writes a phrase not fully compliant with Strunk and White should be shot" to Humpty Dumpty's "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean".
If you expect me to defend the arbitrary rule about fewer vs less, then I expect you to defend your arbitrary position on the sliding scale and why mixing up fewer/less is OK but disinterested/uniterested is wrong (or if you don't mind that, they're/their/there). :-)
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Date: 2008-09-08 11:34 am (UTC)So eg. "less" and "fewer" don't really differ in meaning; they only differ in the existence of this rule that declares that one should be applied to counts, the other to quantities. We happily apply "more" to both counts and quantities, so clearly it's not necessary to have two different words for its antithesis; just arbitrary convention.
On the other hand, "disinterested" and "uninterested" shouldn't be interchanged because they do have distinct meanings and their blurring may create ambiguity.
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Date: 2008-09-06 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-08 11:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-07 12:18 pm (UTC)So I can have less water
I can also have less boxes
But I can't have fewer water
Now this is a fairly major adjustment, but the language does that a lot. Here in the Netherlands the language is terribly codified, with the government occassionally issuing rules as to how it should be used. The result is best illustrated by the annual TV show called 'The great dictation' in which the host reads out sentences and people have to write them down. You'd think this would be easy - right?
The results are then marked for correct spelling and grammar, and a winner is announced. The results show up two things 1) Belgians are better at this than the Dutch,2) Almost no-body is capable of using the language accurately.
Lock things down too tightly and you'll just end up with everyone being wrong. Dutch is in theory a much more straightforward language than English, with rules for spelling and everything...
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Date: 2008-09-08 11:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
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