Watch Your Language

Jonah has long awaited the chance to have Columbia University linguist John McWhorter on the ...

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Jonah has long awaited the chance to have Columbia University linguist John McWhorter on the show, and now he’s finally here. In a particularly un-rank episode of The Remnant, Jonah asks John about the shifting nature of language, and if it’s really a good thing that usage shifts so rapidly (e.g. “literally”). Also, what grammar police campaigns have been successful in preserving grammatical order, and where have they failed?

Show Notes:

–John’s many, many books

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  1. Avatar photo
    Robert

    Reading this made me think of your riff on "Jew" as adjective and noun. Now it applies to "Black." https://www.bookwormroom.com/2020/07/10/cancel-culture-absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely/

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    Saied

    Mr. Goldberg, I agree that assimilation is a good word and a better concept. One comes to America to become American in all the tangible and intangible ways that make one American. That is what we immigrants think. It is unfair to immigrants to ask them to stay what they used to be. For that, they could have saved the airfare.

    As for John Winthrop, it is the shining city upon the hill that is the attraction.

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  3. Charles Lawrence

    I was struck by Jonah’s comments that sporting events are not political with the idea that Colin Kaepernick is politicizing them. American sporting events in contrast to sporting events in some European countries always have the national anthem, most often a military color guard and sometimes military flyovers. We are drenched in a certain style of nationalism. It did not used to be the case that American flags were plastered everywhere. Players helmets for example. So let’s not pretend that the norm is apolitical.

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  4. Bryan Gage

    Jonah should stop beating himself up over his use of split infinitives; the Chicago Manual of Style—the Bible of the book publishing industry—considers the prohibition of them to be a grammatical superstition. (The same goes for ending a sentence with a preoposition or beginning one with a conjunction.) They often amount to bad form—hence the "rule," to keep unskilled writers out of trouble. But a good writer's intuition is sufficient to know when it's okay to end a sentence with a preoposition, and indeed, it's often preferable to do so when clarity or graceful flow may be at stake.

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    Beach004

    Perhaps someone has already commented—I haven’t read the preceding 82; but John and you missed one of the worst and most common grammar horrors: “John took Billy and I to the game.”
    I have lost friends when I winced too openly over *that* one; and it threatens to become acceptable in polite company!

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  6. Richard Fulmer

    While John McWhorter's ideal of everyone listening to everyone else with respect regardless of their dialect or grammar is noble, it's not yet reality. And behaving as though it is reality and discouraging people from learning how to speak correctly and with authority is not doing anyone any favors.

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  7. Geoff Schmidt

    This episode was, at times, incredibly rewarding and, at others, monumentally infuriating. When McWhorter would point out, "I can give X number of languages where there is no such distinction," I would exclaim, "BUT WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT THOSE LANGUAGES!!!" I was all the more amused, just now as I walked past a bookcase and noticed Buckley's "The Right Word," a volume I've referred to many times.

    It also reminded me of, growing up, reading WFB's work (both fiction and non) and joking with my father that you always need a dictionary close at hand when reading Buckley. My appreciation for the "right" word hit its apogee when I began referring to the thesaurus as the "Book of Lies" because there are very few actual synonyms; there are different words, because they DON'T mean the same thing. The differences may be nuanced, or simply a matter of context, but they are different.

    Additionally, I will regularly find myself having this exchange, after someone else has used...well, you can guess the word:
    Me: "Oh, it was reduced by a tenth?"
    Them: "Huh, what?"
    Me: "Never mind, go on!"

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    Dave IL

    Isn't it true that the rapidly changing dialects of the internet era make it LESS necessary for standard English to evolve. We have online access to "The Urban Dictionary", "The AP Stylebook", "The Merriam-Webster Dictionary", and the MLA Style Guide. Shouldn't Merriam-Webster, OED and the AP stop trying to reflect current usage and act instead as slowly evolving standards?
    Also, Dr McWhorter is a very accomplished scholar, but some of his arguments seemed inconsistent. When Jonah had made the case that we were hard-wired to discriminate more on the basis of language than skin color, McWhorter's response was that Booker T. Washington should not have had to work so hard on his diction. When Jonah granted that language is obviously going to change over time but that it doesn't hurt to slow the change down, his guest responded with examples from William Jennings Bryan, Shakespeare and, essentially, "The Canterbury Tales".
    Nevertheless, McWhorter showed how dedicated he is to his profession. At a time when we're considering the effects of slavery, Jim Crow, and police harassment on Black Americans, some scholar needed to research the effects of 253 episodes of "The Jeffersons". It couldn't have been easy.

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    DavidK

    That usage, syntax, grammar, and semantics evolve is indisputable, but I must side with Jonah. Different linguistic styles provide nuance and color; knowing when and where to use those forms suggests to others (particularly employers) discernment, judgment, and adaptive flexibility.

    I am hardly one to wield the shop-worn term of “white privilege.” Yet, it seems the worst form of bourgeois condescension for the educated well-to-do to instruct immigrants and ethnic minorities to not worry about Standard English. If I didn’t know better, I would say it was deliberately malevolent. I understand and sympathize with Professor McWhorter’s position that form should matter less than content— in most cases it should. But, as discussed on the podcast, language is primal to and hard-wired in humans (and, in highly specific brain regions). No matter how woke employers proclaim to be, I promise that they will notice and weigh a job candidate’s manner of communication in some form.

    Preferring a specific vernacular as a reflection of one’s identity is, and should be, distinct from a learned repertoire to satisfy a range of circumstances and moods. Both Jonah and Professor McWhorter expressed exhaustion with the President’s coarse and invariant colloquial manner. That says something.

    Fabulous podcast. Bring Dr. McWhorter back often— please.

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    WALL-E

    I listened to this today and am now reading Kevin Williamson's "Courtesy and Capitalization" (article posted today on NRO on the NYTimes decision to capitalize "Black"). I would have been very interested in McWhorter's thoughts here, and Williamson mentions McWhorter as a potential authoritative figure in his article. Maybe you'll get into grammar and publishing styles next time you have him on.

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