More From My Honored Mother With Two English Degrees

"I'm not really sure what you hope to accomplish by destandardizing the language, but if it is to make your mother gnash her teeth, you are successful every time I read "me and Allen" instead of "Allen and I" as the subject of a sentence."

Thank you for your comment, Mom! You see, I believe you are something like a prescriptivist, and thats why using langwidge wrongly gets up your nose. But I am closer to being a descriptivist - although I believe I have left the plane of that spectrum.

But that's why I feel less compunction to follow/know the rules, but rather to observe, anthropologist-style, how language is used. I believe that cultural norms of use are more legitimate than the official grammar textbooks. I know you understand all this, I am only using the occasion of your well-recieved comment to elucidate this subject and tease apart the threads which are so interesting to me.

Where I have left the spectrum of prescriptivism/descriptivism is that I want to actively sculpt and play with language as an artist and a writer. I want to get under the hood.

(Prescriptivism and descriptivism covered in the post "Language Hackers Unite!", linked above [click title of this post].)

: ) is Language

Yes, : ) is language :-p . Written language, sign language, call it what you will, the boundaries are blurry when you consider that the Asian written languages consist of pictographs. It's all the same. Even hand gestures - waving, signaling a cab, putting a finger to your lips in a shushing gesture - are language. :-

Pointed silences are language. Giving someone the silent treatment is language. :-{

It's all about context. If something is done in a context that gives it meaning - or if it is done in a context that deliberately deflates or questions meaning - it is part of the language game ;^] .

Emoticons are the written equivalent of some of the Asian languages - like Vietnamese I believe - where inflection can totally change meaning. The same effect is achieved in English but it is more limited to sarcastic (or overtly ironic) inflections that simply negate the overt meaning of the words used, in a way that says, I mean the opposite of what I am saying. I.E., you and I can utter the same words in the same context but the inflection alone can be different and therefore the meaning completely changes.

Inflection is therefore language too, and communicated in written shorthand via emoticons and things like (:- /

/:^\ are modern hieroglyphics and represent an incursion of East to West, of right brain to left brain.

Where You Can Put Your Commas

When one puts a comma (or any punctuation) after a word in quotes, like "this," it is standard to put the comma/punctuation inside the quotes as I have done "here." However that has never seemed logical to me, since it is the word one is putting in quotes, not its place/role in the sentence (as indicated by its punctuation). For that reason we here at Destandardize Language say put your punctuation outside of your quotes, like "this". Ahh - so much more satisfying to the mind.

Not that we'd make a RULE about it (and upon reflectin' it is worth it to note that the convention with parentheses is to put the punctuation outside the last parenthesis, like so). So the Destandardize Language suggestion actually brings the use of parentheses and quotation marks into congruence regarding their relationship to punctuation. Funny that Destandardizing something can bring it into greater harmony.

New Blog of Note For Language Fans

Click on the title of this post for a link to a really exciting new website for serious fans of language: Streamofvulgarityblog.

If language is a meal, then cuss words are the garnish. No reason why they shouldn't be stitched into everyday speech... Feel free to use the comments section to discuss the reclaiming of the word "cunt".

Who Was Ludwig Wittgenstein and Why Does He Keep Following Me Around?

Wittgenstein was a philosopher who made a lot of waves in the forties and fifties that are still felt today. He focused on solving the classic problems of philosophy using an analysis of the language of those "problems".

Wittgenstein shewed [archaic english spelling] how the act of using language is analogous to playing a series of games. In these language games we play, the meaning of a word can only be determined by how it is used. Problems in philosophy arise when two or more similar-but-distinct language games get all jakered up together.

An easy example is the old question posed by Bishop Berkeley, "If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?" (He was playing this particular game to argue for the existence of god PS.) Here the whole thing is sort of an obvious canard, in that it hinges upon how the word "sound" is used. Berkeley was using the word in a way that was different from how it is normally used. It was almost like he was using lingo.

Wittgenstein's method would include conducting an investigation into all the different ways the word "sound" was used. He would walkaround it over and over and get a perspicacious view of it. He could then percieve that Berkeley's use of the word amounted to a kind of sleight of hand.

In this way he managed to largely dismantle the entire enterprise of philosophy. You don't hear much about the philosophers these days. These days philosophy is all about how to evaluate arguements. But no one's actually making any arguaments. I mean, people used to be really worried about wether we exist or not. Nobody's worried about that anymore. The problems of philosophy largely just dried up and blew away, and it was Wittgenstein doing a lot of the blowing. It was like he gave philosophy a huge chiropractic adjustment/really good Rolfing sesh.

So god bless Ludwig Wittgenstein for being a language pioneer and one of the patron saints of the Language Destandardization movement. In pareticular we appreciate his observation that a word's meaning is in its use. We here at Destandardize Language would shoehorn spelling inthere too somehow, couldn't agree more, and we say use them and spell them however you want, however you want....

I Before E, Except After C, and Except For All the Exceptions

This has got to be the least favorite spelling rule around the offices here at Destandardize Language. Why the exceptions? Whynot just have it be a freeforall? There is no logical reason for i and e to make the "long e" sound in only one sequence, and in fact they make the same sound either way you write them, ie or ei can both make the "long e" sound. Is the archaic spelling of the word so important that we have a rule about it so people can bitch at me my whole life for forgetting it? Destandardize Language would argue that since the two spellings are functionally equivalent, the "i before e" rule should be rescinded in its entirety.

Language Visionary Hunter S. Thompson Dies in Self-Inflicted Act of Irony

Hunter S. Thompson is dead in an act of irony that frankly everyone should have expected.

He shall be remembered here at Destandardize Language for his not insignificant role in helping to set language free.