Informative and instructive reviews on Amazon

[fluffyhamster]

I thought it might be productive to post about any books that have generated a fair amount of interest and even controversy in reviews on Amazon: note for example the range of stars awarded to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, and the reviewers' reasons why.
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/08 ... pr_helpful

The "most helpful" ordering puts *Geoffrey Pullum* <<swoon gibber>> (in his only amazon review to date) at the top of the heap, but it's the low-star (or generally negative) reviewers' comments that are perhaps the most "illuminating". It seems to be asking too much of these people to expect them to sift evidence, think for themselves and reach their own conclusions about what English they should use in whatever context; the problem with their "The mob is lynching the language" brigade/argument is that, whilst that may seem to be arguably true in some instances* (especially when it indeed seems to be the mob, rather than the "best" users in a crazy moment of carelessness, who are doing most of the lynching concerned), there would seem no principled or fair way of clearly and cleanly dividing these from the genuinely loony prescriptive dictums dreamt up by the ultra-power-mad.

To quote one reviewer (Richard Hershberger), 'The one-star reviewers overlook two points. The first is that Merriam Webster often gives firm advice. Those who claim that this book is "anything goes" are misrepresenting the book. Indeed, frequently this advice is exactly what the prescriptivists would give. Frequently it is not, but that's what happens when you let evidence influence your opinion. The second, more serious point is that a reader can learn the traditional conclusion even when Merriam Webster disagrees with it. If a reader wants to know Fowler's opinion this book will give it. There is no longer any need to actually own a copy of Fowler. So the objections to this book implicitly are that it gives more information than they would like. This is a peculiar objection to make of a reference work. It would be downright sinister were there reason to suspect these opinions to be at all thought out.'

Or another (S. Gustafson): 'Those who claim that this usage handbook is too lenient, or defends bad usage, seem to object chiefly to the fact that the authors here state their conclusions in terms of what is really at stake --- "if you write 'X', you are at risk of being corrected" --- rather than simply labelling them "wrong," as if some kind of moral judgment was being passed.'

Then there is Bob Manson: 'Language is a consensus, not an arbitrary master... and there are so many arbitrary masters that it's more a question of which one you decide to obey, not which one is correct. Many of the descriptions in M-W's usage guide demonstrate just how arbitrary other guides can be, as it's not unusual to see numerous conflicting recommendations.'

All of whom differ in their opinion from, say, S. Robertson: 'Some people examine a word as an entomologist does a bug. They love peering at every frazzled appendage, ragged bump, and slimy excretion and then announcing that it is a truly wonderful bug, that we all should love it, and that to think it ugly, clumsy, or offensive fails to perceive and appreciate its glorious evolution. These people write dictionaries. Others believe that, as with any tool, there are advantages in using the tool of language carefully. They believe that there are good bugs and bad bugs and that none should be used in soup. These people write books on usage. The two groups are often at odds since they write with different intention; Webster's inflamed the controversy in 1961, when it decided not to tell readers of its third unabridged dictionary which words were slang, colloquial, etc. (this oversimplifies; I do not have W3 at hand). A usage book by dictionary people - especially Webster's - would be a contradiction in terms were this a serious book. At heart, it is not. It is also not a usage book. It is a polemic against usage writers. A typical entry examines what usage writers have had to say about a word or construction and then announces that they were misguided, ignorant, or merely wrong. The tone is overtly patronizing and obnoxious; one can almost hear in the background, a la Beavis and Butthead, the authors' self-congratulatory sniggering. The moral is that usage is a pesky, pedantic thing best ignored in favor of saying whatever feels good. Feeling good is perhaps what this book is really about: don't worry if you have ever made one of these mistakes because it is not a mistake after all - the other guy was wrong, not you. Are usage writers ever misguided, ignorant, or wrong? Yes, especially since too many are dilettante journalists and free-lancers peddling old wives' tales and personal whim. That does not mean that if you write as well as a bug does people will love you. If you are looking for a guide to usage, look elsewhere. Fowler's (Second Edition, not the recent Third) is probably still the best.'

In fact, there are quite a few more pretty quotable bits, but this is Dave's, not Amazon, so I'll stop there.

Although most here on Dave's would probably agree with those reviewers who think it a good book, there are sometimes people (especially on the International forums) who think that we should be much more prescriptive; then there has been a fair amount of knicker-wringing on the AL forum about how fair it is to teach to any sort of standard, however descriptively or democratically it might be arrived at, when there is so much English that is still "out there".

Anyway, reading this sort of review can mirror and/or complement the sort of discussions (debates?) that we sometimes have here too.

*That being said, about the only example in the reviews themselves that seems valid is the prescriptive "solution" to '!!!Where's X at?' (*/?Where's it?) > 'Where is it?': 'Let's consider an example of its "persuasive argument": It's all right to say, "Where's it at?" this book asseverates because "Where's it?" would sound funny. That's its argument--I'm not making this up. This is my argument: It's not all right to say, "Where's it at?" because "where" means "at what place", and thus 'Where's it at?" is equivalent to "At what place is it at?" Too many "at"s. Yes, "Where's it?" sounds funny, so say "Where is it?" instead.' (By A. Customer). Note that a longer word (i.e. not a pronoun) would be OK with the contraction though: Where's Kathy/the dog etc; and that 'Where's the party at?' (not really a genuine question about any particular party, to my mind) would sound fine, and cool to boot (and a quick look now in my M-W Concise edition confirms my intuitions by telling me that the idiomatic phrases where it's/one's at are used to evoke the language and attitudes of the 1960s and early 70s (i.e. the phrases came into widespread use in the 60s, which was presumably their heyday), and that other than in the foregoing phrases, 'at almost never occurs after where in writing from standard sources'. Seems like pretty good guidance then in the Concise at least, if you ask me).

[woodcutter]

It's a shame the debate can never move on, even if Pullums are involved. Stick to the old rules! They are always logical! So say twits A. Rules are bad. Only usage counts! So say twits B, before going off to give F grades to a few of their students who displayed bad English usage.

And then there is always the person who makes the "I love words I do" sort of post.........

[fluffyhamster]

I rather suspect though that the low marks that twit B awards are either for genuine mistakes (that make the meaning too unclear), or in response to pressure (esp. from the powers that be) to standardize the marking so that things are quicker and easier (for those potentially less capable and/or prescriptive colleagues at least). But I must admit that I have only marked foreign learner stuff, so I can't really comment on the type of flaws, real or imagined, that native writers are held to make; all that I can say is that I don't think that many non-native mistakes should "count" (unless they are destined for corpora of learner errors, not that these would all matter in speech or even many less formal kinds of writing), and certainly not in exams where they are striving to match native performance/"standards" (but again, I have only marked crappy high school end of semester exams penned by some JTE on crack or some other good dope, so you'll perhaps excuse my high-falutin' tone). http://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword ... gh-falutin' (Jotham especially might like the 'Good Word Dictionary' there! )

[woodcutter]

I haven't marked any high school exams either I must admit, but I have looked through a certain amount of mocks marked by my dear mother. Anyway, the point is that they are full of "awkward" usage, as well as mere orthographic errors. Is this OK?

As soon as Caxton started printing, and maybe before, there became standards set down by people like him that people started to follow. It made communication easier. The progress of standard English is to some degree a dialogue between the "street" and Caxton's various heirs. No extremism is warranted on either side.

[fluffyhamster]

I fancy using the term 'linguistic martyrdom' the next time I'm faced with a prescriptivist nutter:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 05370.html

The embedded You Tube clip of Stephen Fry having a slight rant becomes somewhat embarrassing, but it makes an interesting complement to the one that JTT posted at the top of page 7 in the 'Interesting websites' thread.

[woodcutter]

What about descriptivist nutters though? They always roam unmolested. David Crystal says that what he doesn't like about "people like" Lynne Truss (the famous punctuationista) is that "they seem to be saying 'I'm better than you'". Ha. Linguists like him are always modest little flowers I suppose, who never think themselves in any way superior to anyone due to their knowledge.

Native speakers often use the "wrong" preposition with verbs when reaching into the dusty far corners of their vocabulary. On what grounds am I to complain about this when I mark their essays, or perhaps comment on their recorded class discussion? If they look their blunder up on Google, there might be a good few hits. How many hits make it OK? Doesn't the extant set of dictionaries and grammar books also have a part to play in deciding what is OK?

[Stephen Jones]

If they look their blunder up on Google, there might be a good few hits. How many hits make it OK?

That's going to be a judgment call. Much would depend on where the Google hits came from. For verb + preposition you could probably use the BNC or the Time Corpus.

Doesn't the extant set of dictionaries and grammar books also have a part to play in deciding what is OK?

So you'd drive your car into a river if the map said it wasn't there.

[woodcutter]

The easier it is to make quotable rules about something, the more influence abstract pronouncements from the representatives of power will have (and when a language is first codified such pronouncements may have great power to transform). So prescriptive rules have the strongest influence on aspects of written English. How many times have you seen the spelling "wierd"? So many times, I suggest, that if the dictionary wasn't there to call that spelling "wrong", you would have to regard it as a valid alternative.

There is an aspect to prescriptivism beyond quoted rules as well, which is the general attitude that you should follow the powerful elite rather than what you are locally exposed to. Majority usage is not necessarily the key therefore. This attitude is very useful for creating a standard to ease communication between regions, but unfortunately reinforces social inequality.

[fluffyhamster]

Was watching 'The Brave One' last night ("what a film"! A real disappointment considering that Neil Jordan was the director and had apparently rewritten or evolved ( ) certain aspects of the original "vigilante" script).

Regarding that 'evolved' just then (did your eyes bulge like this: ), in the 'making of' featurette, a producer said 'Blah blah blah and we evolved it...' (=developed). So I go and look in Merriam-Webster and it doesn't mention 'evolve' in this sort of "high-powered" producer-talk, but it does mention 'evolute'.

Still, M-W in this instance at least does say 'If you use evolute, you can be sure that most of your readers will find it peculiar, if not actually incorrect. Remember that evolve is fully synonymous with evolute and is available as a less problematic substitute.'

So quite why everyone including even the pedants isn't satisfied with this book is a bit of a mystery.

Still, I do wonder why those who aren't exactly pedants seem to also want to make a '"show" of their "learning"' in their own usage at least. But maybe these film producers and "arty" types' language should be really appreciated for its "creativity".

[fluffyhamster]

Discussion concerning whether Stephen Fry was being serious or not in the QI clip alluded to above (FWIW, I think he WAS - no trace of humour there at all):
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=817#comments

[fluffyhamster]

How's this for an informative and instructive review:

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2 Stars out of 5; None the wiser for reading this book, December 28, 2005
By Bathrobe (China) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bloor & Bloor, The Functional Analysis of English: A Hallidayan Approach (Paperback)

I thought this book would allow me to understand functional grammar.

Instead, I found a book that sets out a particular analysis without adequately explaining why such an analysis has been arrived at. It is the worst kind of 'school textbook', telling the student what the dogma is without trying to reason with him/her, as a presumably intelligent person, why such an analysis is the preferred one.

For instance, their analysis of 'The kettle is boiling' into Given information ('the kettle') and New Information ('is boiling') makes no sense to me at all. All that this analysis does is take the underlying Subject/Predicate construction and reinterpret it as Given/New. In fact, my intuition is that 'The kettle is boiling' forms a single unit in which the WHOLE SENTENCE is New information.

Because the book does not try to discuss with the reader why this analysis has been adopted, it is impossible to figure out what the principles of analysis should be. From reading this book, I still don't have a clear idea how functional grammar analyses sentences.

I would not recommend this book.

( http://www.amazon.com/review/R88NLAME2O ... r_rdp_perm )