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An opinion piece excerpted from his book Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English. Grammar Puss Archived 2014-04-30 at the Wayback Machine, by Steven Pinker (1994). Argues against prescriptive rules. A revised draft of this article became the chapter "The Language Mavens" in The Language Instinct
Judgmental language – using insulting or pejorative language in an argument. Pooh-pooh – stating that an opponent's argument is unworthy of consideration. [84] Style over substance – embellishing an argument with compelling language, exploiting a bias towards the esthetic qualities of an argument, e.g. the rhyme-as-reason effect [85]
A aggravate – Some have argued that this word should not be used in the sense of "to annoy" or "to oppress", but only to mean "to make worse". According to AHDI, the use of "aggravate" as "annoy" occurs in English as far back as the 17th century. In Latin, from which the word was borrowed, both meanings were used. Sixty-eight percent of AHD4's usage panel approves of its use in "It's the ...
Inclusive or Equity Language is a language style that avoids expressions that its proponents perceive as expressing or implying ideas that are sexist, racist, or otherwise biased, prejudiced, or insulting to any particular group of people; and instead uses language intended to avoid offense and fulfill the ideals of egalitarianism.
In the English language, there are grammatical constructions that many native speakers use unquestioningly yet certain writers call incorrect. Differences of usage or opinion may stem from differences between formal and informal speech and other matters of register, differences among dialects (whether regional, class-based, generational, or other), difference between the social norms of spoken ...
In linguistics (particularly sub-fields like applied linguistics and pragmatics), a hedge is a word or phrase used in a sentence to express ambiguity, probability, caution, or indecisiveness about the remainder of the sentence, rather than full accuracy, certainty, confidence, or decisiveness. [1]
English does not allow topic-drop, as evidenced by the insertion of expletive subjects in sentences such as There is rain. Yang notes that in English child-directed speech, children very rarely hear expletive subjects. Yang asserts that this leads English-acquiring children to momentarily conclude that English is a topic-drop language.
Shea later read the entire Oxford English Dictionary, and documented his observations in Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (2008). [1] [2] He was subsequently hired to work at Oxford University Press as a consulting editor of American dictionaries. Shea has also contributed to the "On Language" column in Sunday's New York Times. [3]