Dear Dick,

Justifiably I cannot resist calling your attention to my last two books,
'Narrative, Perception, Language, and Faith' (Macmillan, 2005) and
'Avatar-Philosophy (and -Religion) or FAITHEISM' (Imprint Academic, 2011)
since one can say that, for both, the central theme is play -- in
particular, understanding what real play is.  You can tell from the title of
the first that its presence lies across human life.

I take the Joke as exemplary of play.  To undertake a joke you have first to
establish in the hearer a false context for the word whose ambiguity you are
going to trade on;  once established, you then proceed to indicate another
context which induces a gestalt-switch on the first meaning.  Similarly in
the Statement, you and your hearer begin with a presumed -- thus, imagined
-- perfect match on the 'referent' of the logical subject (often not the
grammatical subject), but the hearer is ready to have that reference updated
(in the logical predicate).  This matches play, as Gregory Bateson argued
('Steps to the Ecology of Mind' Paladin, 1978):  when young chimpanzees
play, an apparent attack on a sibling includes a countervailing clue in a
distinct type of 'playful grin' that cancels the aggression.  So one has to
have agreed rules before one can update them.  We teachers have to establish
what the rules are at the same time we show how they have to be updated if
anyone is to talk successfully at all.

You make a good point about 'more'.  My guess is that, since, in our world
full of bargaining (and the deceits that sometimes attend it), trouble over
'more' occurred LESS than than trouble over 'less' and 'fewer', redundancy
was and is needed.

Edmond


Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

Email: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/
Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256





> Dear Edmond,
> 
> I would wager that Stephen Fry is aware of every one of the distinctions
> you mention and would almost always make the same usage choices in his
> speech and writing that you do.
> 
> The point he is making, however, is a different thing altogether. Language
> is a glorious thing, he says, and our relationship with language should be
> joyful and playful. We should have fun with language. How dreary he finds
> it that those who make the most noise about others not getting all the
> distinctions right come across as angry and joyless, having no fun
> whatsoever. God forbid that should be the attitude teachers communicate in
> their classrooms.
> 
> Fry understands the less/fewer distinction, but he has decided not to get
> angry at others who don't.
> 
> (My own observation is that "less" is being used increasingly with count
> nouns as well as mass nouns, to the point where that is fast becoming
> standard usage. Does this mean we are losing clarity? Is our language being
> impoverished? We use "more" for both count and mass nouns, and I've never
> heard anyone complain that the absence of a distinction resulted in muddled
> thought or language impoverishment. The list of language changes that
> purists have railed against in the past but which are now considered
> utterly unexceptionable is long and can teach us about the nature of
> language change and about human nature as well.)
> 
> Also true that many Brits are now pronouncing "aitch" like Americans, just
> as many Americans are now saying "spot on" like the Brits. Is it worth
> getting our knickers in a knot (another UK import) about it?
> 
> So let's teach our students to revel in infer/imply and a hundred other
> interesting and useful distinctions--without giving them any cause to
> believe the study of language involves a joyless censoriousness.
> 
> Dick
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Edmond Wright <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> 
>> Stephen Fry's complaint about the complainers about spelling and grammar
>> relies on a dubious assumption.  Like many another who rails at the
>> Œpedants¹ who jump to correct misuse of English in the media, he uses the
>> argument that public usage is the final court of appeal.
>> 
>> What is not inquired into is how Œusage¹ is to be defined.  For example,
>> English schools once had to make more of a fuss about distinguishing words
>> (once part of the  English examination syllabus, actually called
>> ŒConfusables¹ ­ such as the little group Œjudicious-judicial¹,
>> 'industrious-industrial', Œcontinuous-continual¹, Œsensuous-sensual¹,
>> Œceremonial-ceremonious¹, etc.).  Because of this inclusion in the
>> syllabus,
>> very few errors with confusable pairs appeared in the usage of newspapers,
>> magazines, -- even comics. So it was part of the common Œusage¹.   If such
>> discriminations have disappeared, it says more about fashions of teaching
>> than anything else.
>> 
>> Another UK example, occurs in the pronunciation of the letter H:  I was
>> taught in school that its name was Œaitch¹ (now still to be heard on the
>> BBC
>> television programme ŒCountdown¹, a word-game, and also confirmed by the
>> Oxford English Dictionary), but my bank contacts tell me that they are
>> working for the ŒHaitch SBC Bank¹, having, no doubt, been avid viewers of
>> the Australian soap ŒNeighbours¹.  Similarly, are our English pupils to be
>> told that the pronunciation ŒharASS¹ is the common English usage and not
>> ŒHARass¹ because a sufficient number of American cop shows are on English
>> TV?  It becomes a question of ŒWhich country¹s  usage?¹
>> 
>> Take one other of Stephen Fry's examples, the confusion of 'refute' and
>> 'deny'.   ŒRefute¹ means BY USING COUNTERVAILING PROOF, PRODUCE A
>> CONVINCING
>> ARGUMENT AGAINST ANOTHER¹S ASSERTION:   Œdeny¹ means WITHOUT ARGUMENT, TO
>> CONTRADICT ANOTHER¹S ASSERTION.  The loss of the distinction between
>> Œrefute¹ and Œdeny¹ would be an enfeeblement of the language:  I read last
>> week in the newspaper that the Irish Sinn Feiner Jerry Adams has just
>> 'refuted' recent accusations against him, but no arguments had been
>> forthcoming from him.  Amazing!  I would have very much liked to have read
>> his refutation.  What I don't like about this error is that it seems to be
>> used by persons uncertain of their vocabulary WHO ARE TRYING TO USE A BIG
>> WORD TO SOUND IMPRESSIVE, THOUGH THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS.
>> 
>> One can add that it does not take very long to teach the correct use of the
>> apostrophe.  Stephen Fry himself appears to be aware of the rules:  he
>> could
>> not have picked this up from greengrocers' price tags, could he?  Similarly
>> with 'imply' and 'infer' -- I was fairly successful in teaching the
>> difference with the rhythmic tag 'Speakers and writers imply:  hearers and
>> readers infer'.
>> 
>> Nor does he seem to have heard of redundancy in language, and the essential
>> part it plays in our everyday communication -- for example, that involved
>> in
>> the distinction between count and mass nouns, subject and verb agreement,
>> singulars and plurals, and more.  'Fewer' and 'less', for example, is tied
>> to the count noun/mass noun distinction -- Does one ever hear anyone say
>> 'fewer sand'?  As for plurals, one can hear and read in the media BOTH
>> 'bacterium' AND 'bacteria', 'criterion' AND 'criteria', 'phenomenon' AND
>> 'phenomena' for the SINGULAR -- so just what is the common usage?  The fact
>> that no one says 'radiuses' instead of 'radii' I attribute to the fussy
>> pronunciation of the former (though I have heard 'crisises' instead of
>> 'crises').  Redundancy is fact disappearing as regards subject and verb
>> agreement (e.g.  -- heard this week on BBC radio, 'There's lots of planes
>> on
>> the tarmac', 'All of us objects to it').  But redundancy is badly named
>> because these extra, strictly repetitive clues are there to ensure that we
>> can pick our way more clearly through the cloud of words we hear, and thus
>> they cannot be summarily jettisoned.  The aim of redundancy is to help
>> hearers get the message.
>> 
>> Do I sense an underlying old-romantic resistance to the teaching of grammar
>> here?  With all the excellent textbooks now on sale in the U.S.A. (by
>> Constance Weaver, Martha Kolln, and the like, and the absence of them in
>> England) I fear that we English are still mired in a self-defeating
>> ideology
>> which is sustaining class distinctions by which we over here, both 'upper-'
>> and 'lower-class', seem to be mesmerized.  An overall appeal to 'usage'
>> conceals both snobbery and its inversion.  I trace the prejudice to the
>> deeply embedded division in the UK between private and state education, and
>> the foundations of that can be traced further.  We even had a CONSERVATIVE
>> member of parliament this week complaining about the Prime Minister being
>> too 'posh' to understand the plight of the poor.  I imagine that you
>> Americans don't even use the word 'posh'.  So we are 'posh', are we, if we
>> try to teach apostrophe rules to working-class children?
>> 
>> Edmond Wright
>> 
>> 
>> Dr. Edmond Wright
>> 3 Boathouse Court
>> Trafalgar Road
>> Cambridge
>> CB4 1DU
>> England
>> 
>> Email: [log in to unmask]
>> Website: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/
>> Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256
>> 
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