This isn't a newspaper article, but I thought this is a good article that you all might enjoy. It is about Steve Job's leadership lessons.

I agree with most of them. I thought it was interesting how he hated PPTs in one section, but then in another section the author mentioned the slide he used to end his presentations. I also don't think you need to terrorize the people who work for you, but generally I thought it was excellent. I do believe a CEO has to be both detail oriented, but also visionary. That I haven't heard before. Most texts talk about CEOs needing to be visionary, but not necessarily detail oriented.

That's a looooong article. What's a PPT?

What's a PPT?

A PowerPoint slide presentation. It's something you have to endure in some jobs, similar to wearing a tie and a suit. The name comes from the three-letter file extension in Windows. PowerPoint is a part of the MS Office suite of programs which includes Word and Excel.

Thanks, Z. I'd never have figured it out!

In other news, it seems that NBC News is prescient! Taken off the internet news section: NBC News' decision to air an edited call from George Zimmerman to police in the moments before he shot Trayvon Martin was "a mistake and not a deliberate act to misrepresent the phone call,"

Powerpoint has begun to come into its own in early education. In schools where there's lots of laptop access, kids make their own 'storymaps'. I'm finding it a handy tool for retelling simple tales in the target language, working in repeated phrases illustrated with downloaded images.

I guess I'm a real knuckle dragging luddite. I'm surprised Winchester didn't enjoin Microflaccid from using the term. http://www.winchester.com/Prod...ges/power-point.aspx

PPT

Peter Norvig did a funny sendup of Lincoln using PowerPoint for his Gettysburg Address (link).

That's great, z!

I think PPTs get a bad rap. People learn differently. Not everyone is an auditory learner, though many speech "experts" rant against PPTs. For visual learners, they work well. The important thing is not to have too many words on each PPT and to have a little humor and visual stimulation. I love Google images for that. I have a file just of PPT images, with tons of fun images.

I do realize though that many overdo PPTs with tons of words, making them boring and unstimulating. Not everyone does that, though.

I just saw a blurb on MSN saying that some jock named Junior Seau's death was ruled a suicide. In French, seau means "bucket." Normally I don't laugh about people kicking the bucket, but in this case, uhhh, welllll...

Oh, that is funny! I wonder if he gave himself a good kick!

He's donated his brain to science. Speculation is that repeated concussions caused brain damage that led to his "self-kicking the Seau!"

WM

Since eau is French for "water," I must further abuse the pun by wondering whether, when a Frenchman answers what's in a bucket, he says, "S'eau."

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
The Guardian has a review of what looks like an interesting book: The Language Wars, by Henry Hitchings.

EDIT: Two other reviews - The Independent and The Observer.

This same book was also reviewed in the May 14 edition of The New Yorker and gives an interesting overview of the decades-long battle between prescriptivists and descriptivists. In the end, the reviewer seems to be accusing the descriptivists, especially Hitchings, of hypocrisy.

Wordmatic

quote:

Originally posted by wordmatic:
This same book was also reviewed in the May 14 edition of The New Yorker

That review contains some serious misunderstandings, as discussed by Liberman.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

It's an interesting debate. While I mentioned in another thread the possibility that sometimes descriptivists go to the dark side with their obsessions with certain language questions, I have to agree with Liberman on this one. I cannot believe Acocello touts Strunk and White and finds it rather liberal in the use of rules. Has she read the book?

I had not known that the AHD came about because of the descriptiveness of the Web III, with including such words as "irregardless" and "ain't."

I also enjoyed seeing the Yiddish word "bubbe-meises," or "wives tales." I haven't heard that word in awhile. Yiddish, like German, just has fun words!

quote:

Originally posted by goofy:
That review contains some serious misunderstandings, as discussed by Liberman.

The only answer is to read the Hitchings book itself. I find it amusing that Lieberman accuses Acocella of misplaced anger, when he is clearly extremely angry himself. The emotional responses of either side should have no effect on our logical reading of their points of view. It is this overwrought flinging of zingers from both sides that makes me really not care too much about the Pre-Dis-criptivist battles, but, oh well.

Wordmatic

quote:

Originally posted by wordmatic:

The only answer is to read the Hitchings book itself.

After seeing how badly Acocella misunderstood Rickford's and Pinker's introductory essays to the AHD, I'm confident she misunderstood Hitchings as well. The last two paragraphs of the review, where she seems surprised that Hitchings admits that there are rules, is a standard misunderstanding of the descriptivist position.

I don't think it's weird to be angry that such a confused review could get published in such a well-regarded magazine.

Anyway, Liberman quotes a letter by EB White that contains the same sort of misunderstanding. I like how White calls descriptivists "Happiness Boys"!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

The emotional responses of either side should have no effect on our logical reading of their points of view.

Oh, to live in that world would be fantastical!

It is this overwrought flinging of zingers from both sides that makes me really not care too much about the Pre-Dis-criptivist battles, but, oh well.

I think it has to do with the constant misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the D-side by the P-siders, but, oh, well, so be it ...

All I can say is that anyone who really thinks Strunk and White is not hugely prescriptive (using rationale that is based on mere style) does not understand the book. That's where Acocello lost me.

There was what I think was a particularly perceptive (and long) comment by Deniz Rudin to the second of Liberman's LL posts. In particular I liked the first paragraph:

quote:

The most frustrating thing about popular accounts of the so-called usage wars, like Ms. Acocella's, or indeed like the late David Foster Wallace's, is that they make the mistake of considering descriptivism and prescriptivism as two opposing but more or less equal viewpoints—as two different approaches to the same problem. But the fact is that there is no such thing as a descriptivism vs. prescriptivism debate within a genuine scholarly community. The very idea is absurd, because descriptivism and prescriptivism are not the same type of thing. Descriptivism is an investigatory approach to the formal study of language, and it is uncontroversial in linguistics departments because it is the only sane approach—nobody opposes descriptivism in biology, or argues for a prescriptivist physics. Prescriptivism, on the other hand, is a branch of etiquette columnry—prescriptivists advise us of what the more embarrassing solecisms are, so that we can in avoiding them be judged by the cultured to be one of their own. To suppose that there is general conflict between the two -isms as competing philosophies is absurd.

quote:

Originally posted by goofy:
I don't think it's weird to be angry that such a confused review could get published in such a well-regarded magazine.

Anyway, Liberman quotes a letter by EB White that contains the same sort of misunderstanding. I like how White calls descriptivists "Happiness Boys"!

It's not weird to be angry that such a confused review could get published in such a well regarded magazine (except that she is one of their regulars)--but it is dubious for Lieberman to use Acocella's anger as partial proof of the illegitimaticy of her logic and then to come across as even more angry himself. Sure, he's got a right to be angry, but the anger of either side should hold no weight in the reasoning of each as to why the other is wrong.

Not having read the introductory AHD essays to the AHD, I have no opinion on how badly Acocella misunderstood them. I am not, however, into hating E.B. White for being a prissy old prescriptivist. Call me a Charlotte's Web softie. That was pretty much the norm in 1957, when all of us had a Miss Thistlebottom teaching us grammar at school. All the Misses T. taught us to write well in English; and because we do know and understand the rules and can navigate our way around them and bend them when necessary, we have the luxury of being descriptivists if we want to be.

Personally, I managed to make my living as a writer and an editor for over 40 years, able to follow whatever style book was preferred by each employer, and realizing, not too far into my career that there was not one "right" rule for every situation; only conventions agreed upon so that style within a given publication will be consistent.

I guess what I am trying to express here is that the rancour that goes along with these discussions is just very tiresome to me. If Acocella and others have misunderstood so badly, is that because they are not paying attention, or because the descriptivist point of view has not been expressed clearly? To answer that question, I suppose that I now will definitely have to read Hitchings' book, and the whole damned American Heritage Dictionary--not that I'm the least bit angry about it!

Wordmatic

quote:

Originally posted by wordmatic:

It's not weird to be angry that such a confused review could get published in such a well regarded magazine (except that she is one of their regulars)--but it is dubious for Lieberman to use Acocella's anger as partial proof of the illegitimaticy of her logic

I don't think he does that, but whatever.

quote:

Not having read the introductory AHD essays to the AHD, I have no opinion on how badly Acocella misunderstood them. I am not, however, into hating E.B. White for being a prissy old prescriptivist.

Well, I don't dislike Elements of Style because it's prescriptive. I dislike it because it gets so much stuff wrong. Anyway, I think Liberman quoted EB White to show that the same misunderstandings expressed by Acocella have been around for 50 years.

quote:

If Acocella and others have misunderstood so badly, is that because they are not paying attention, or because the descriptivist point of view has not been expressed clearly?

That's certainly possible. So after you've read Rickford's and Pinker's essays, if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
All I can say is that anyone who really thinks Strunk and White is not hugely prescriptive (using rationale that is based on mere style) does not understand the book. That's where Acocello lost me.

There's no question that Strunk and White were hugely prescriptive. But I did not read Acocella as saying they weren't, only as interpreting White's motives for being so inflexible as caring only about preserving the list of guidelines written by Strunk, without alteration.

WM

quote:

Originally posted by goofy:
Well, I don't dislike Elements of Style because it's prescriptive. I dislike it because it gets so much stuff wrong. Anyway, I think Liberman quoted EB White to show that the same misunderstandings expressed by Acocella have been around for 50 years.

I'm sure that's true. I'd be more inclined to believe they were flat-out disagreements rather than misunderstandings.

quote:

If Acocella and others have misunderstood so badly, is that because they are not paying attention, or because the descriptivist point of view has not been expressed clearly?

quote:

That's certainly possible. So after you've read Rickford's and Pinker's essays, if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

Or, as with White, et al, her mind was made up and she was impervious to Hitchings' reasoning. Anyway, I'll certainly let you know if I have questions.

Wordmatic

quote:

Personally, I managed to make my living as a writer and an editor for over 40 years, able to follow whatever style book was preferred by each employer, and realizing, not too far into my career that there was not one "right" rule for every situation; only conventions agreed upon so that style within a given publication will be consistent.

But you see, WM, that's because you are reasonable. Reasonable people are able to read Strunk and White and use the parts that are helpful and forget about the parts that aren't. However, what I see happening is that editors (and I deal with a lot of them) take every single piece as a hard and fast rule. I know one who thinks you are absolutely illiterate if you end a sentence with a preposition. Then there's the "which" and "that" supposed rule. And so on. That's what Strunk and White did to many English writers.

As for White, I agree with you wholeheartedly that he is a wonderful writer...though it has been pointed out by Language Log that he doesn't follow many of the rules stated in the book he co-authored. Good for him!

I suppose I'll have to read that Hitchings book...just not the whole AHD! I do like the usage panels in the AHD, though.

What makes me think that Acocella doesn't simply disagree, but really doesn't understand, is this:

quote:

Most important is that the editors [of the AHD] tried to pull descriptivists over to their side. In the most recent edition, the fifth, they have not one but two introductory essays explaining their book’s philosophy. One is by John R. Rickford, a distinguished professor of linguistics and humanities at Stanford. Rickford tells us that “language learning and use would be virtually impossible without systematic rules and restrictions; this generalization applies to all varieties of language, including vernaculars.” That’s prescriptivism—no doubt about it.

and this:

quote:

For the editors of the A.H.D. to publish Pinker’s essay alongside Rickford’s is outright self-contradiction. For them to publish it at all is cowardice, in service of avoiding a charge of élitism.

I hope these AHD essays are online, because I am certainly not going to go out and spend actual money on a dictionary, when I've got the entire Internet at my fingertips! Of course, I could go to a library. I hope CW will forgive me for not thinking of that first.

And here I thought for a couple of weeks that my only WC-related homework was to watch the entire Black Adder series again. I am doing that. They are all on a high bookshelf in my family room in VHS format--how quaint--but I am watching them on my iPad via Netflix.

Arnie, I liked that comment you quoted. It actually makes more sense than anything else I've read, without actually reading the book and the essays myself (lazy, lazy). The two "sides" are actually talking past each other, speaking two different languages, like a couple of political parties in election season.

Wordmatic

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:

quote:

The most frustrating thing about popular accounts of the so-called usage wars... is that they make the mistake of considering descriptivism and prescriptivism as two opposing but more or less equal viewpoints... But the fact is that there is no such thing as a descriptivism vs. prescriptivism debate within a genuine scholarly community. The very idea is absurd... Descriptivism is an investigatory approach to the formal study of language, and it is uncontroversial in linguistics departments because it is the only sane approach—nobody opposes descriptivism in biology, or argues for a prescriptivist physics. Prescriptivism, on the other hand, is a branch of etiquette columnry—prescriptivists advise us of what the more embarrassing solecisms are, so that we can in avoiding them be judged by the cultured to be one of their own...

I think the problem with this statement, like so many we hear today in other arenas (evolution vs creationsism, corporate tyranny vs. communism, etc ad nauseam daily shock-jock radio fodder) is that it places the two viewpoints at opposite poles & calls the other guy names (albeit polite academic names in this instance). I worry about my buddy Obama-- a centrist consensus-builder if there ever was one-- in the times in which we live.

I noticed the social proclivity for extremism before the financial collapse of 2007-08 (which tends to get blamed for thephenomena.) There were open and bitter recriminations, in fact, by liberals against Bush back in the day.. but I remember really becoming aware of this phenomenon in the context of an online argument between atheists & theists in response to a Bill Moyers show in about 2005... I wonder if we might blame it on the digital age? There was a time when you couldn't get your personal viewpoint expressed beyond the local cocktail hour...

Any thoughts?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bethree5,

Bethree, I do think you've hit the nail on the head (as did that quote of arnie's). It used to be valuable to be consensus-building and collaborative, but it doesn't seem to be that way anymore, at least in the US. However, I see that happening in the rest of the world, too. The whole European financial debacle is a good example.

As for the discussion at hand, though...descriptivists vs. prescriptivists...I agree with arnie's quote that they are not opposing arguments.

quote:

Originally posted by wordmatic:
I hope these AHD essays are online

Yes, Liberman links to them, but here they are: John Rickford "Variation and Change in our Living Language" and Steven Pinker "Usage in the American Heritage Dictionary"

quote:

Originally posted by wordmatic:
The two "sides" are actually talking past each other, speaking two different languages, like a couple of political parties in election season.

I don't think that was what that quote was saying. For people who misunderstand the issue, there are two opposing sides. But in the scholarly community, there is no debate. People who study and work with language are both prescriptive and descriptive, as required.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

Thanks for the two links, Goofy. I thought they were in the Language Log, but hadn't bothered to go back and look. Now I have read both and frankly, don't really understand what Acocella was on about.

Your final statement was further explained to me yesterday in our chat by Jim. Then I have no quarrel, as I enjoy the descriptive studies and points made by Pinker, Rickford and others, but also go all, like Prescriptivist when it comes to my writing!

Kalleh, you must read the essays, but your hard copy of the AHD, unless it is the latest edition, may not contain them, so use Goofy's links. I pulled a couple of quotes from the Pinker essay that I thought you might enjoy.

Here's one you can fling at your workplace editor, not that it will do you any good:

quote:

How do ludicrous fetishes like the prohibition of split verbs become entrenched? For a false consensus to take root against people’s better judgment it needs the additional push of enforcement. People not only avow a dubious belief that they think everyone else avows, but they punish those who fail to avow it, largely out of the belief—also false—that everyone else wants it enforced. False conformity and false enforcement can magnify each other, creating a vicious circle that entraps a community into a practice that few of its members would accept on their own. Experiments on wine-tasting have shown that people not only praise a wine that has been surreptitiously spiked with vinegar if they see everyone else praise it, but they will disparage a lone rater who calls it as he tastes it.

And here's the last paragraph of his essay:

quote:

A final comment. In this essay, I have ended sentences with prepositions, used between and each other for more than two, used where for in which, begun sentences with and, but, and so, treated none as plural, and followed an everyone with their. You got a problem with that? Check the Usage Notes!

I must confess, I failed to notice any of these "crimes."

Wordmatic

quote:

I must confess, I failed to notice any of these "crimes."

Yes, I do feel that people have become less hide-bound by the "rules" that proscribe those "crimes" over the last few years (although I admit I may be suffering from the recency illusion). Apart from egregious* examples (mostly split infinitives) only a few prescriptivists would notice.

* Used in the word's original, non-pejorative, sense of "standing out from the flock".

Stephen Pinker responds.

And the New Yorker has just published another article (discussed by Ben Zimmer) full of misunderstandings.

The article has an update at the end, which attempts to clarify that it is not addressing the whole of linguistics, but instead 'the nit-picking displayed in certain mainstream essays that promote extreme descriptive values while simultaneously demonizing the prescriptive “rules.”' I'm not sure what this means.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

Zimmer's blog entry goes a long way towards discussing what's at the heart of the prescriptivists' straw-man version of descriptivists and what it is they do. First off, the latter try to describe language, that is discover the rules that govern a certain variety of language. That could be the language of a single author or the language of a group. This is usually dismissed as a speaker/writer does not have to follow any rules and may speak/write as they wish to. Nonsense. The "rules" of prescriptivists are divided into the useless non-rules (the ones Fowler calls myths and superstitions) like not-splitting infinitives "rule", not ending a sentence with a preposition "rule", etc., and their usage rules like the that-which introducing (non-) restrictive clauses "rule". These "rules" have many origins, unlike the descriptivists who base their language rules on observations of how a language is actually spoken or written, the prescriptivists on the whole make up their rules based on an intuition of how the preferred register of language was written at some golden time (like when the "rule"-maker was in school.Actually, I am being generous here, they seldom make up their rules, instead they copy them from some early bemoaner of the sorry state of the language.

When one considers the complex nature of the origins of English it seems amazing that there's ever been any consensus on grammar whatsoever!
Britons, Romans, Picts, Scots, Angles, Saxons, Normans, Danes, and a cast of thousands of dialect speakers - OY! Being totally prescriptive would condemn every major writer in what we call English for failure to follow the rules - but somebody keeps changing the rules! That "someone" is usually some heretic who breaks the rules to particularly good effect, IMHO.

And I finally understand this entire conversation! I am so pleased. If I subscribe to the New Yorker, does that make me an old poop?

WM

Stephen Pinker just wrote an article on "Why New Yorker writers and others keep pushing bogus controversies."

Thanks, goofy. I think that article sums up what all the fuss is about admirably.

When one considers the complex nature of the origins of English it seems amazing that there's ever been any consensus on grammar whatsoever!

Well, that is what language is, a consensus or at least a convention among the users of same. Either way, the only way I can think of to determine what the grammar of a given language is is to describe the one being used currently by speakers of that language.

Being totally prescriptive would condemn every major writer in what we call English for failure to follow the rules - but somebody keeps changing the rules!

Prescriptive rules are ones made up out of nothing. They are fewer in number than descriptive rules: just compare the length of a real grammar like Huddleston & Pullum compared to a style guide like Strunk & White. Prescriptivists and descriptivists are basically arguing how one collects rules of grammar. The real rules of grammar are there in how each language is used by the speakers. Most writers do not come up with new rules of grammar, they come up with or use different styles of writing.

Dull and Boring.

While I'm sure Richard has, I've never been to Dull, but have been to Boring on many occasions, including via bicycle. Many years ago there was a sign on Highway 212 as one entered town proclaiming, "Boring Gospel Hall." Honesty in advertising! Fortunately, the local fire department no longer uses initials on their apparatus, since "BFD" seemed just too apropos.

Another funny thing about Boring: The bicycle rack at a local eatery is placed directly in front of the handicapped motor vehicle operators' parking spot, making it appear that it's a disabled bicyclists' parking area.

quote:

The article has an update at the end, which attempts to clarify that it is not addressing the whole of linguistics, but instead 'the nit-picking displayed in certain mainstream essays that promote extreme descriptive values while simultaneously demonizing the prescriptive “rules.”' I'm not sure what this means.

I don't either, Goofy.

Thanks for the Pinker article. I agree with arnie that it is very elucidating. However, remember this?

quote:

One such controversy springs from the commonplace among linguists that most nonstandard forms are in no way lazy, illogical, or inferior. The choice of isn’t over ain’t, dragged over drug, and can’t get any over can’t get no did not emerge from a weighing of their inherent merits, but from the historical accident that the first member of each pair was used in the dialect spoken around London when the written language became standardized. If history had unfolded differently, today’s correct forms could have been incorrect and vice-versa.

Really, linguists agree with "can't get no..."? Doesn't that include a double negative, thus making it unclear? That I couldn't live with.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Really, linguists agree with "can't get no..."? Doesn't that include a double negative, thus making it unclear? That I couldn't live with.

In what way is I can’t get no satisfaction unclear? Nonstandard and stigmatized, yes, but unclear?

It's negative concord, where two negatives reinforce each other. Pinker's right, if history had gone a different way, standard English would have negative concord, like French has negative concord.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Thanks for the Pinker article. I agree with Arnie that it is very elucidating. However, remember this?

quote:

One such controversy springs from the commonplace among linguists that most nonstandard forms are in no way lazy, illogical, or inferior. The choice of isn’t over ain’t, dragged over drug, and can’t get any over can’t get no did not emerge from a weighing of their inherent merits, but from the historical accident that the first member of each pair was used in the dialect spoken around London when the written language became standardized. If history had unfolded differently, today’s correct forms could have been incorrect and vice-versa.

Really, linguists agree with "can't get no..."? Doesn't that include a double negative, thus making it unclear? That I couldn't live with.

But then he follows that statement with:

quote:

But the valid observation that there is nothing inherently wrong with ain’t should not be confused with the invalid inference that ain’t is one of the conventions of standard English. Dichotomizers have difficulty grasping this point, so I’ll repeat it with an analogy. In the United Kingdom, everyone drives on the left, and there is nothing sinister, gauche, or socialist about their choice. Nonetheless there is an excellent reason to encourage a person in the United States to drive on the right: That’s the way it’s done around here.

so I think that explains that while linguists may "agree with" "can't get no," in the sense that there is "nothing inherently wrong with it," they do not agree that it is standard usage.

Thanks for the article, Goofy--I finally read it and will pass it along to my friend the poet, who was the one who pointed out the Acocella New Yorker article to me in the first place. She and I had been carrying on a long conversation about an English teacher we'd had in high school, one Virginia Beck, who was a prescriptivist's prescriptivist, terrified my friend, who became a published author, but just inspired me to enjoy language more. I like Pinker's article for pointing out that these are false dichotomies. We can revere the old poops of our various pasts, if we felt fond of them, without continuing to hold their lists of rules as Holy Scripture.

Wordmatic

so I think that explains that while linguists may "agree with" "can't get no," in the sense that there is "nothing inherently wrong with it," they do not agree that it is standard usage.

That's pretty much it. Again, this is misrepresented by the other side as "when it comes to grammar, everything goes".

I am in the airport now so don't have time to find it. However, I had posted a double negative that is on our survey site, and literally no one knows how to answer it. Everyone here on WC agreed with me the that it was unclear, if I recall correctly. If one double negative is not clear, aren't they all?

I'll find the post tonight and will link to it. All I can say is that no one in our entire organization knows how to answer that question, and some answer Yes, while others answer No.

Okay. I found it here

The question is still worded that way, and no one really knows what it means.

Perhaps the rest of you here are smart enough to always recognize what double negatives mean. But, I can assure you, not everyone does.

However, I had posted a double negative that is on our survey site, and literally no one knows how to answer it.

The bit of text in that thread (not a question, more of a statement) does not look like a double negative to me. It makes no sense to me, but it doesn't have much to do with the negation.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
If one double negative is not clear, aren't they all?

There are at least 3 kinds of things that are called "double negatives".

1) the standard English use of two negatives to make a positive, as in "not unlikely" or "I don't believe that X didn't happen" - which means "I believe that X happened."

2) Negative concord, where two negatives reinforce each other as in "I can't get no satisfaction". This is nonstandard, but I don't see how it is unclear.

3) overnegation, like "Don't fail to miss it", where there is one negative too many. Here, "fail to miss" means "miss". Language Log has a lot to say about overnegation.

I think Kalleh's survey is overnegation (type 3).