Stephen Fry, whose blog is usually filled with the stuff of techno-geekery, has this week produced instead a long, slightly rambling, essay on language.
There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.
He does ramble a little though, doesn't he? The long paragraphs make it rather forbidding in appearance, though reading the post is well worth the effort. Unusual, as most of his other "blessays", as he calls them, have paragraphs averaging half the length of the ones here.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
True, but it's well worth reading (as is almost anything he writes) and although there are some who would, rather unfairly, say that he's just in love with the sound of his own voice, I'd say that he clearly loves language for its own sake. If all of his blog was on the subject of language I'd read every post. The trouble is I'm actually not terribly interested in most of the stuff he posts about electronics and computers and all the other technical paraphernalia. I glance at it but can't work up any enthusiasm.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
I suspect that this latest essay of his is just a little tongue in cheek. It is apparent to me that Stephen Fry loves the English language more than most and is highly skilled in its use.
In spite of what he implies, I suspect that he, as much as any pedant, would abhor much of the misuse of language that is all too commom.
Incidentally, there is a series on the Beeb right now where he is driving through all the US States in a London taxi. Quite a lot of fun although, inevitably, rather shallow. Next week he will be in California and other Western States.
Richard English
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UK
I don't believe so. I believe that he has a genuine love for and joy in the language that transcends petty pedantry about apostrophes and such like. There is no inconsistency in pointing out accepted usage or using it yourself but believing at the same time that arbitrary rules fundamentally don't matter very much.
If anything he was being deliberately pedantic on QI for comic effect. The clus is in the fact that it's a comedy about pedantry.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
Originally posted by BobHale: There is no inconsistency in pointing out accepted usage or using it yourself but believing at the same time that arbitrary rules fundamentally don't matter very much.
Sure, but none was definitely the wrong choice. I think you're right, he was just trying to be funny.
The MWDEU is pretty funny on the subject of singular vs plural verb concord with none (link).
quote:
A specter is haunting English usage—the specter of the singular none. No one knows who set abroad the notion that none could only be singular, but abroad it is. Howard 1980 says, "A considerable number of readers of The Times are convinced beyond reason that the pronoun none is singular only"; Burchfield 1981 notes that listeners to the BBC are similarly convinced.
He certainly chose his example poorly (which leads me to suspect that he was doing it precisely to be funny) but one of the basic conceits of the program is that he, the highly educated Mr Fry, pokes fun at Alan Davis who is portrayed as an utter dolt. It's all just acting of course but those are the personas adopted for the program. He was simply playing the role expected of him.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
It is interesting that Stephen Fry's blessay contains a link to an early Fry and Laurie sketch on YouTube. That is almost certainly illegally uploaded so he appears to be sanctioning copyright theft.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Originally posted by BobHale: He certainly chose his example poorly (which leads me to suspect that he was doing it precisely to be funny) but one of the basic conceits of the program is that he, the highly educated Mr Fry, pokes fun at Alan Davis who is portrayed as an utter dolt. It's all just acting of course but those are the personas adopted for the program. He was simply playing the role expected of him.
I do think that pedants aren't in love with the English language...with the sound of words, the different ways of writing and expressing, the pure ecstasy in reading the flow of language. Of the pedants I've seen, they're very rigid, bent on rules, and inflexible. They may be grammar mavens, or whatever, but I'd never consider them linguaphiles.
Benjamin Zimmer, chez Language Log, posts on both the early and the later Mr Fry (link). (Most of the interesting bits are in the commentary, which is usually the case in the blogosphere.)
