'Could care less' vs. 'couldn't care less'
As any good writer will tell you, using language well is an art, not a science. The descriptivist who claims that any phrase anyone ever uses is legitimate is, in at least one strong sense, deluded. Regardless of what these permissive pundits might say, it is clear to anyone with an ounce of common sense that some people express themselves more clearly than others, largely because of the kinds of phrases they habitually use. To deny this fact is to deny the principles of good communication and ignore the power of rhetoric. Ultimately, this approach cheats students by short-circuiting any attempts to improve their writing and communication skills.
A good case in point is the dispute over "could care less" vs. "couldn't care less." As many people have already pointed out--both in usage guides and across the web--if you could care less about something, it follows that you must care at least a little about it. Thus, saying "I could care less" to express indifference about a given subject is patently illogical. I first noted this usage as a 15-year-old, when an acquaintance of mine used it; and--believe it or not--it actually confused me. I wasn't yet articulate or informed enough to express my objection to the usage; but now that I am, I will exhort anyone who cares about how they handle the English language to use "I couldn't care less," and not its ugsome alternative.
A good case in point is the dispute over "could care less" vs. "couldn't care less." As many people have already pointed out--both in usage guides and across the web--if you could care less about something, it follows that you must care at least a little about it. Thus, saying "I could care less" to express indifference about a given subject is patently illogical. I first noted this usage as a 15-year-old, when an acquaintance of mine used it; and--believe it or not--it actually confused me. I wasn't yet articulate or informed enough to express my objection to the usage; but now that I am, I will exhort anyone who cares about how they handle the English language to use "I couldn't care less," and not its ugsome alternative.
posted by Thomas McAllister at 4:03 PM
3 Comments:
I don't think that the descriptivist POV is as simple as "if a native speaker says it, it must be right." More broadly stated, it's that the rules for the language need to be derived/deduced from the actual usage of a population of users rather than imposed by the dictates of other languages (e.g. Latin), history ("this word originally meant ..."), or logic ("double negatives always make a positive"). The descriptivist approach is essentially anthropological, namely to study the language without preconceptions as to how it should be. I always imagine a linguist hacking his way through the jungles of South America to study a newly discovered tribe, transcribing their language, and then saying "No, this is wrong -- you see, logically it should be ..." :-)
I doubt there's a serious descriptivist anywhere who would claim that there is no such thing as a mistake, or who would claim that all utterances are equally good/valid/communicative/euphonious. Descriptivism does, however, make a distinction between the science of how a language works mechanically and the art of using it effectively and precisely. They claim fiefdom only over the former; as for the aesthetics of usage, they claim no mandates beyond the same one the rest of us language-aware folks do. A quick read through the Language Log will find many instances where die-hard descriptivists are quite willing to pronounce something as just flat-out grammatically wrong.
Anyway, this is all an aside. The "could care less" thing is -- and I say this as a person with heavily descriptivist leanings -- wrong. By the same token, however, I am pessimistic about the likelihood of it somehow going away via, say, vigorous education. The best one can do is to note this to an audience already inclined to want improvement, no?
Exactly--and that's what I've set out to do in my column. I would feel uncomfortable telling members of a different speech community how to speak their own language, but I consider it every speaker's prerogative to choose how they use their own, as well as to offer advice to other members of their own language community regarding its use.
Prescriptivism, of course, often does take into account history, logic, etc. in suggesting how a language should be spoken, but by the same token, serious prescriptivists know they must take actual usage into account to one extent or another. It would be ridiculous, for example, to insist now that English speakers say "napron" for "apron" just because the change was originally based on an error. But as a prescriptivist, I see no reason not to object to such errors as they occur in my own time.
At any rate, I'm glad to hear that descriptivists do acknowledge the distinction between the science of language and the art of using it well. I'd always thought that must be the case, but had never seen it articulated before. Thanks!
Thomas McAllister writes: "At any rate, I'm glad to hear that descriptivists do acknowledge the distinction between the science of language and the art of using it well. I'd always thought that must be the case, but had never seen it articulated before." Since I'm a linguist (and in my work thoroughly descriptivist) and an editor (and in that work as hard-nosed as they come), I thought I'd add my bit. What wordzguy writes is, I would say, the common view among linguists, though I have encountered a few who are more anarchist in their leanings. More than that, if you're going to study a language objectively, the social connotations of a given word or construction are one of the facts you'll have to take into account. Some variation goes almost unnoticed by native speakers, while some is stigmatized, and a truly descriptivist dictionary would note that fact.
In any case, there's another factor that wordzguy didn't bring up directly, which is that linguists are concerned primarily with speaking, not writing, since what linguists focus on are the aspects of language use that are essentially automatic, since those are easily studied scientifically; this is much more true of speaking and listening than of reading and writing. It's the common ground of language, the conventional, universally accepted background that individual speakers or writers start with, that linguists want to describe. Linguists aren't so interested in written language, and when they are it is in such issues as how the elements of the writing system reflect the elements of spoken language, the transmission of writing systems from one language to another, and so on.
To look at it somewhat differently, the basis of modern linguistics is the view of language as a hierarchically-arranged conventional system of contrasting signs; this leaves out some important features of language use, of course, but it focuses on what linguists do seek to describe—the system common to all speakers of a language. What that system is used to express and how well it is used to express it lie outside linguistics proper, just as neuroscientists working on vision have no particular competence thereby in esthetics or the training of artists.
Of course, there’s also the fact that speaking and writing take place in different media with different cognitive strengths. Speaking is linear; writing relies on visual pattern recognition, which has some degree of parallel processing. Speaking is evanescent, writing permanent; this makes different demands on the memory. Speaking usually takes place face to face; writing requires an abstract view of one’s audience without conversational cues. All of these make for quite different linguistic features—for example, effective speaking tolerates (even requires) redundancy that would be out of place in effective writing; speaking tends to use less intricate relative clauses; writing uses punctuation in place of a rich range of intonational patterns. The habits of mind necessary for effective writing have to be taught and consciously applied, which in itself requires some form of prescription. Since the purpose of writing is to allow the writer to communicate far beyond the range of the spoken voice (in time as well as in place), this requires more conservatism than in spoken language.
I suppose this exercises some radical types, but considered objectively, it just is and has to be. Looked at as a question of language, a written language is its own conventional system of signs, closely related to the spoken language but distinct; because of the demands of the medium, writing has its own requirements for effective communication, which are what sensible prescriptivism is always striving to propagate. In this regard it doesn’t matter how “logical” or grounded in history certain spellings or rules are for writing; they’re simply conventional. They’re assumed by all the writers of a generation or more and provide the background for communication in the medium, and what is important is not how closely they reflect historical facts and current colloquial usage but whether they promote clarity and freshness in writing. These are questions linguists have no professional reason to consider, so generally they don’t. Me, I’d qualify as both a thorough-going descriptivist and a staunch prescriptivist. Anyway, enough of my hijacking your comments—the only reason to go on so long about it is that it’s not something I’ve actually seen anyone say. Not as such, anyway; I know many linguists, editors, writers, and teachers who would probably agree with me.
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