Linguistic Ethics
In the spring of 2012, a few friends and I were discussing Game of Thrones, then in the throes of its second season, on Facebook. As we typed our thoughts about the shocks and thrills befalling Westeros, one friend commented, “If Arya dies, I will ball my eyes out.” Her choice of word, not bawl but ball, was fascinating to me, especially in the context of a show where gruesome disfigurement was commonplace: I pictured her with a melon baller in one hand, an eyepatch in the other. I began to collect a list of these phrases, sometimes called malapropisms after literary character Mrs. Malaprop, sharing a root with apropos. But I’m a little strange in that regard—more usually, saying ball instead of bawl is just called an error.
I don’t think that’s quite right.
Error and Invention
I enjoy playing with language the same way a professional athlete enjoys playing their sport. The goal of language is to communicate; the goal of sport is to compete. There is a specific set of rules I know well, for a language called formal English, and I'm talented at achieving some of the difficult convolutions these rules require or permit, just as a professional soccer player is able to make difficult shots while ensuring they avoid off-sides, stay in bounds, never touch the ball with their arms, and discreetly foul their opponent while making the most egregious acts out of fouls against themselves.
But those tasks are completely arbitrary—they stem from the rules, not from the goal. You don't need to follow the rules of formal English to communicate effectively, any more than you need to follow the rules of professional soccer to have a competition. For a pro, the rules are important to focus the competition, whereas for an amateur, they're more like suggested guidelines. If someone gets "their," "there" and "they're" mixed up, I know that they're not as adept at these rules as I am. But that doesn't mean they're wrong, any more than a group of kids that play soccer without boundary lines or foul rules are wrong. They're just doing it differently, or doing something slightly different, and they're still achieving the ends they share with the pro communicator or athlete.
Language and sport are not limited to communication and competition, however; they're also fun. I collect malapropisms for fun, in the same way a soccer player might collect gifs of weird amateur soccer plays. I like to see someone say they're "wrecking their brain," or that they saw something so gross it "made them wretch," because I can see how they got there. Sure, it starts with a mistake of sorts, forgetting the word wrack or retch. But after the mistake is the ultimate kind of creative synthesis, knowing where you want to go but now how to get there. Wrecking my brain evokes someone tearing apart their living room looking for a lost car key. Made me wretch evokes, not a mere action, but a total transformation into a new type of person. Someone who reigns in their enthusiasm is not a horserider, but a sovereign ruler.
These phrases, though “wrong,” are beautiful, the result of creativity. I'm amused by the ways the rules I know so well can be understood differently, and I admire the unexpected and interesting connections people make when the rules fall away. Whether the rule-breaking is intentional, or stems from ignorance of the rules, is irrelevant.
After all, any set of rules will change and evolve. If a new soccer league starts up and uses a field that's half the size and a ball that's twice the size, they'd be "playing soccer wrong" in that they weren't following the same established rules as the pros. But if that new league was more fun to watch, and it beat out the old league for viewership and fandom, then who was "right" in the end? If a new sport entirely comes into being, is it "wrong" for people to play it before it's professionally popular and economically or culturally valued? What if the new sport keeps using the old sport's name, while the old ruleset, with a field twice the size and a ball half the size, is never used again? Who is really "playing soccer" then? When the NBA introduced the shot clock, or the NFL mandated protective gear, were they destroying their sports, or improving them? The answers to these questions are clear—present practice always overrides tradition. Soccer is what it is, not what it was.
So is English. Nobody speaks the English of Twain or Melville, much less of Shakespeare or Chaucer. All language is constantly evolving, driven by the random mutations of everyday speech, and the intentional creativity of all types of people finding new ways to convey meaning. That’s not a mistake—if anything is, it’s our our attempts to impose retroactive, synthetic rules on this organic chaos.
Behold: Chaos!
Consider the widely-derided Bushism misunderestimate. It's an unusual and largely redundant coinage, which people use as an excuse to laugh at it. After all, everyone knows that we should say things only once, and as clearly as possible! Or should we? Cease and desist is an equally redundant phrase, and nobody in the ivory tower is suggesting that lawyers and judges are illiterate morons for using two repetitive, arcane words where one common one, stop, would do just as well. The difference here is not whether the phrase will be understood or not, but the assumed intellect of the speaker.
This hypocrisy is rampant amongst those who like to snipe at the linguistic usage of others. Though pronouns like [they’re / their] and [its / it’s] are the most common targets, another common class is the idiom, where the usage of words in a specific configuration are wholly divorced from their usual definition.
Consider the phrase hone in, sometimes considered a corruption of a "correct" idiom, home in. Both are apt metaphors, where the literal meanings of the words can provide context to understand the idiom: hone to delicately refining a shape, home to circling in search of a center. Yet one idiom, home in, is considered "correct," because the legion of grammarists decided on it. Why? Do these idioms perform differently on the criterion of clear communication? I can’t believe that any person has ever been confused by hone when they wouldn't have been confused by home.
Or consider the well-used phrase the proof is in the pudding. Pedants love to point out that, actually, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Sure, that's the origin of the phrase, and its literal interpretation is closer to the idiomatic one. But has anyone ever heard the proof is in the pudding and gone off, like Clouseau, in search of a clue-filled dessert?
This hypocrisy is even more evident in idioms like bated breath, which use archaic terms with no clear meaning to anyone. Is baited breath really less clear? I’d argue it’s more clear, with bait’s connotations of waiting expectantly. And what of totally nonsensical idioms, like the bee's knees, where the dictionary definitions of these words don't come into play in the slightest? I've been told that this refers to the gyrating dance bees perform to indicate the direction of nectar to their peers. Is that true? Does that make sense?
For that matter, does anything in language "make sense," or have we all just been swimming in the chaos for so long that we no longer see it for what it is? Consider that the phrase I drew the game. What does it mean? Well, that depends on the rest of the sentence.
I drew the game, averting my apparent defeat. (drew = tied)
I drew the game out over hours and hours. (drew = prolonged)
I drew the game from the dusty drawer. (drew = extracted)
I drew the game closer to me across the table. (drew = dragged)
I drew the game with my new set of colored pencils. (drew = sketched)
This is not logical—the same exact word, drew, is used to represent five totally unrelated concepts! This is without even considering other meanings of phrases like draw a card or draw a conclusion, or that game could also refer to a wild animal. But no, here, the total failure of our language to provide clarity is given a fancy name (these are not mistakes, but Homonyms) and is celebrated as a tool for poets and comedians.
Or consider this classic example, quoted here from Steven Pinker, which has reared its head in everything from poetry to the study of natural language processing: what's the meaning of the phrase time flies like an arrow?
The sentence "Time flies like an arrow" is surely unambiguous if there ever was an unambiguous sentence (ignoring the difference between literal and metaphorical meanings, which have nothing to do with syntax). But to the surprise of the programmers [who asked an NLP model what the phrase meant], the sharp-eyed computer found it to have five different trees!1. Time proceeds as quickly as an arrow proceeds.2. Measure the speed of flies in the same way that you measure the speed of an arrow.3. Measure the speed of flies in the same way that an arrow measures the speed of flies.4. Measure the speed of flies that resemble an arrow.5. Flies of a particular kind, time-flies, are fond of an arrow.[Steven Pinker, "The Language Instinct", chapter 7]
The possibility of the time-fly shows us what it might look like if our language were truly based on reason, rather than experience and intuition.
Even the fundamental components that words are made of, phonemes and even letters, cannot be relied on to play an orderly role.
The words through and rough have parts that are spelled identically but pronounced differently, and neither the way it is spelled (which would be "rooguh," ending in a guttural Scotch warble).
Invulnerable and inevitable are negations of vulnerability and evasion, yet invaluable and inflammable use the same prefix for amplification of value and flammability.
One would be forgiven for thinking, upon hearing them for the first time, that Icon and Yukon were antonyms.
Comprise can mean to make up, or to be made up of—it's its own antonym.
Just look at the words queue and phlegm!
If these examples haven't convinced you of the fundamental chaos of English, perhaps Gerard Nolst Trenité can do it with dozens more.
English, objectively, doesn't make sense, and no other language does much better in that regard. No set of rules can guarantee your understanding of language, which is why it's so hard to learn a new one, or teach a computer to understand one. But that lack of reason is a blessing! A language governed by reason would be efficient and unambiguous—it would be Newspeak, or legalese, or computer code, and it would be incapable of supporting poetry or philosophy, puns or metaphors. It would be efficient, but artistically and creatively barren.
Judging Chaos
Why do so many of us care about the "errors" that stem from the rich possibility of language, and try to rigidly enforce the rules that, even when followed, don't result in a sensible or intuitive medium of communication?
The answer is generally elitism, as evidenced by the lack of a scientific or academic term for malapropisms (based on a literary character) and eggcorns (coined in 2003). The insistence of the academy on refusing to give these common usages official names indicates their lesser status compared to the homophone or homonym; they are defined purely in opposition to what is correct and known, at least by those most invested in separating the correct from the incorrect, the learned from the ignorant, the smart from the stupid.
Misusing their, making up words, using redundant words, etc., shows that someone doesn't know the specific rules you do, which is a sign that they're not part of the "in" group, which is, in the case of formal English, an affluent, well-educated, predominantly white, culturally dominant in-group. If the speaker is in a position where understanding those rules is probably important, like a communications profession, academia, or the presidency, then it's noteworthy that they aren't familiar with these rules.
But if the person saying “out of site, out of mind” is your cousin posting on Facebook, or colleague sending a quick informal message, then what possible difference could it make? These kinds of petty errors are just as insignificant as the same people playing soccer together on the weekend without strict adherence to offsides rules. And often, these breaches result from a process of creation and generation and originality—why are these things "errors" in grammar or syntax, when they're valued almost everywhere else? Why do some think that experimenting within rules good, but experimenting with the rules themselves is bad?
It’s not because the rules are good, but because the rules favor those doing the judging.
Celebrating Invention
If you would prefer to be less elitist and more egalitarian, or, like me, want to celebrate linguistic innovation, I see several implications for professionals, writers, and especially professional writers.
First, we should acknowledge that we don't have a monopoly on the "correct" use of English, no matter what varieties of it we speak. I have mastered the most economically valued ruleset, but it is not necessarily the most common, or valid, or useful. In our society, ascribed value stems from the trappings of class and wealth and race, not utility, and though I can whip up a brand narrative worth thousands of dollars in a few hours, I'd get stone-cold slaughtered in a rap battle with any 15-year-old in Queens, and I guarantee a lot more people would like to hear her rap than would like to read my brand narrative.
Second, we should accept—and celebrate!—that language changes dramatically over time in ways that are not defined by logic or rules or intent, but rather, for better or worse, by the usage patterns of both ordinary and extraordinary people. Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive, and all other linguistic rulesets should be considered descriptive as well, following the inventions of linguistic innovators rather than seeking to limit them.
And third, we need to recognize the inherent elitism in thinking less of others who are unfamiliar with society's favored ruleset, and the inherent small-minded conservatism of trying to stop those who are intentionally attempting to change the rules. There is an argument here, perhaps made by editors and proofreaders, that these rules are relevant, that they do guide clarity and understanding— or at least they would be, if we all would just quiet down and follow them, like we follow, say, the rules of the road. And, in a way, that's true. The rules would be useful if people followed them—but, by the same reasoning, they aren't useful in reality, because people don't. And unlike driving, language is inherent to the human experience, governed by rules biologically built into our brain. That's the ruleset that's important, not the one that tells me that to boldly go is a forbidden phrase.
I collect malapropisms because it's fun to see the different ways people have bent the language, and giggle at the ridiculous potential of homophones, and marvel at the cleavages between the spoken and written word. It reinvigorates my sense of joy in language to have that which I take for granted revealed to me in a new light. I don't think the malapropists are stupid, or ignorant, or even necessarily wrong. I recognize that the point of language is to communicate ideas, and if asking for vanilla folders doesn't get in the way of communicating the idea that you want some ordinary, tan-colored folders—concepts for which vanilla is a perfect metaphor— then I have nothing against it. Quite the opposite— I celebrate the ability to create such a metaphor, a much more impressive task than simply remembering that the word manila exists. If an "error" does get in the way of understanding, then I do want to correct the speaker—but to help them achieve their goal of communicating clearly, not out of a desire to force adherence to a set of arbitrary, alogical rules that cement my position at the top of some socioeconomic hierarchy.
Language is for communication. Soccer is for competition. They're also both for fun. And they're also both defined by arbitrary rulesets created by humans, which means they can be (and will be) changed by humans. We should recognize that, to achieve our primary purpose as communicators, we need to recognize when the language we uses changes and flexes, and recognize when those changes are good, rather than struggle in vain to halt the natural forces of erosion and evolution.
If you disagree, then let's not waste our breath haggling about the phrasal provenance of hone or home, but instead delve into the root of our disagreement: the purpose of language, and the best ways to achieve that purpose. Perhaps sparring will give our ideas a sharper edge.