Linguistic change

This comic,um, literally addresses an issue I mentioned not so long ago, so I won’t go into that. It also addresses another issue–linguistic change. As a technical writer, I am tempted to wish that language didn’t change. Eliminating the ambiguity of having new meanings for words would certainly make it easier to be understood. I think this is the rationale for the French Academy, which is infamous for its insistence that the French language not change.

But language has to change over time. After all, the world changes over time. New ideas mean neologisms (and if you know what neologism means, I don’t need to explain this to you). A principle in linguistics is that all languages are sufficient. That is, for their environment. A corollary of this is that when something new comes along, we make or borrow a word for it.

Language also changes for less justifiable reasons, and that’s what makes me roll my curmudgeonly eyes.

Let’s look at the comic, from January 17, 2014:

Definition creep is a neologism, by the way, derived perhaps, from “scope creep,” a term you hear too often in software development circles. The comic dances around the point, dear to my heart, that if you mush around the meanings, you can lose the use of perfectly good words. If if “literal” and “figurative” both mean “figurative,” how can you say that something is literal? Here’s another example: nauseous means “making one want to throw up,” and nauseated means feeling like throwing up. Both ideas are useful (in the right context), so don’t make both words mean the same thing.

We’re going to lose a lot of these battles, but I recommend that when you write, you exercise care to use the right word. In fact, here’s some evidence that we’re going to lose the nauseous/nauseated battle. The character speaking in the center panel is one of the intellectuals in the Luann Strip (Nov 9, 1998).

On the other hand, perhaps Greg Evans has already gone over to the dark side. This one is from 1992.

One last comment: Note that the guy on the left in Basic Instructions said “…in a recent dictionary.” It’s been a running battle in the lexicographical world whether dictionaries should prescribe the “correct” meaning, or merely describe what people are saying, without casting judgement. Currently the trend is toward being merely descriptive. Alas.

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

Two essentially unrelated Luann comics, except they feature the same two characters, first in 2006, the second in 2007. First, Miss Phelps gets one of my pet peeves wrong:

“Lies” happens to be correct. However, she catches the error in the next comic:

And, to answer Mr. Fogarty’s question in the first strip, the future was considered to be behind us by the ancient Greeks. They pictured us as moving backwards through time, because you can see the past, but you can’t see the future!

Here’s a fairly funny comic. What’s going on grammatically here?

Shoe, March 2012

I suppose if you have to explain a joke, it’s not as funny, but the actual humor, I think, is a play on the stereotype of women being concerned about looking fat, and men’s defensiveness about it. But what about the grammar?

The waitress’ intent is to ask a question with a metaphorical verb (“say” meaning “have the opinion”) and a predicate adjective. This is easier to see if we put in the relative pronoun.

Would you say that I’m fat?

Even that invites a defensive reply about whether Loon would take the verb literally and would he  say anything, “No, I wouldn’t even bring the subject up.”

(Here’s a lesson in expository writing: say exactly what you mean. She really is asking, “Do you think that I’m fat?”)

Loon’s defense, though, is to interpret the question as the imperative of “to say” and as containing an object phrase, hence his reply.

I remember two other jokes that rely on similar misinterpretations.

A guy walks into a soda fountain being tended by a jini. He says, “Make me a chocolate malt.” The jini goes “Alakazam! You are a chocolate malt!” Object  and predicate nominative  ambiguity.

And in grade school back in the fifties this joke ran around. You tell an unsuspecting kid, “Say ‘black eyes’ backwards.”  The thoughtless response of “Ise black” would stimulate gales of laughter. Kids quickly caught on, though, and soon the reply was, “Black eyes backwards.” and they’d make their own laughter.

I’ll let you analyze that last one yourself.

Postscript: It’s about a month after I posted this. Today I ran into a comic that uses this same grammatical misunderstanding. It’s from the Luann comic strip for Dec 22, 2007. Luann is one of few strips that make me regularly laugh out loud.