Humpty Dumpty and Miss Thistlebottom
Up to this point we have examined a number of specific questions of usage. Now I’d like to explore the concept of usage itself.
Usage, like politics, is a passionate and controversial subject. Any discussion of it is bound to bring out the prejudices of all involved. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about how words should or should not be used, and like most opinions, some are more logical and sensible than others.
Some people, for instance, embrace a do-as-you-please policy about language. They say, “As long as we communicate, what difference does it make?” Others maintain that anyone who has scruples about usage wants to standardize the language and is opposed to change. They believe that change is evidence that the language is living and growing, thus all change must be good. The most adamant among this group become self-appointed advocates of change, and whenever someone questions a particular change they cry out that no one has the right to tamper with this natural evolutionary process.
On the other side of the issue are the people who insist that rules are rules, tradition is tradition, and that any deviation from what should be or what has always been is yet another sign that the language is going down the tubes. These folks are the selfappointed guardians of the mother tongue.
The do-as-you-please, “language must change” folks constitute the permissive party. Permissivists don’t make value judgments about usage because they believe it’s undemocratic. Of course, they teach their children the difference between good and bad manners, and when driving they obey the rules of the road, but for some reason when it comes to language they believe it’s unfair to insist that there is such a thing as right and wrong.
The rules-are-rules people constitute the purist party. Purists are cruel, grammar-worshiping taskmasters committed to upholding inflexible standards and imposing them on everyone else. They cling obstinately to the ways of the past and revel in telling the rest of us to tuck in our verbal shirttails.
Somewhere between these two extremes are the moderates who maintain that change is inevitable but not always sensible or for the better. These people believe that each case must be considered individually, and wherever possible and reasonable, standards should be upheld, distinctions should be drawn, and the integrity of the language should be preserved.
As you may have guessed by now, I consider myself a moderate purist. I don’t believe all change is good and that anything goes, but I also don’t believe that rules are rules and that the English language is doomed because people aren’t observing them. In short, I am neither a Humpty Dumpty nor a Miss Thistlebottom. Allow me to explain those terms.
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice and Humpty Dumpty have a conversation in which she criticizes how the eggman uses a certain word.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty chides her, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” says Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” cries Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be Master —that’s all.”
To be master or not to be master, and what kind of master to be —these are indeed the questions. Humpty is clearly heading for a fall if he thinks he controls the meanings of words and can use them any way he likes. On the other hand, anyone who believes usage is fixed and that the rules never change is equally cracked.
The caricature of this hidebound type is Miss Thistlebottom, the creation of the late Theodore M. Bernstein, the distinguished editor who for many years wrote a column called “Watch Your Language” for The New York Times. Miss Thistlebottom is the ruler-wielding schoolmarm of your childhood nightmares, the evil exponent of English grammar who plucked prepositions from the ends of your sentences, had a cow when you said “ain’t,” and read you the riot act for using double negatives like “I don’t know nothin’.” But with her sanctimonious (word 50 of Level 7) adherence to arbitrary (word 28 of Level 1) rules, Miss Thistlebottom instilled in you as many falsehoods and as much confusion as the empty-headed Humpty Dumpty would have, had he been your instructor.
What is needed in any debate about usage is a compromise between the ideological extremes of Miss Thistlebottom and Humpty Dumpty. We need to be aware of how words are actually used and at the same time improve our understanding of how they are best used. And we need to draw a distinction between usage and abusage—one based on what seems natural as well as on what most people consider correct. That is a difficult row to hoe, for it means we must resist being arbitrary and instead investigate each issue and decide for ourselves. It means each of us must rise above the temptation to make snap judgments and become more knowledgeable and scrupulous users of the language.
So how the heck do I do that? you’re wondering. How do I become a “knowledgeable, scrupulous user of the language”? (If you need to brush up on the precise meaning of scrupulous, see word 37 of Level 1.) Don’t worry. It’s not as daunting as it seems. There’s plenty of help out there if you want it, and the first step is to find out where to look for it and what to expect.
Advice on usage falls into one of two categories—either prescriptive or descriptive. Let’s start with the latter term.
When you open a dictionary, you are looking at a descriptive document. By that I mean the dictionary is a description of the words of a language at a given time. Dictionary editors, who are also called lexicographers, try to make their wordbooks objective records of the language. As they see it, their job is not to make judgments but to hold up a mirror to the language and show you its reflection. The dictionary gives you the facts, and then you decide how to interpret them.
That’s all fine and dandy; however, what the dictionary doesn’t tell you is how you can use words with subtlety and style, and it doesn’t teach you what distinguishes good writers and speakers from bad ones. A dictionary contains almost everything you need to know about words except how to use them effectively. You could read the entire book and still be unable to create a dynamic sentence. And you could learn a hundred words a week, but if you have no idea what they connote or how to use them accurately, you will have no way of judging whether your usage is cultivated or crass. That is where prescriptive advice can help you.
To prescribe is to set down as a rule or direction—not to lay down an arbitrary law but to clarify what works and expose what does not. To use the lingo of business, the prescriptive approach takes words out of the warehouse of the dictionary, puts them on the open market, and then hands us a sales report: Are these words useful? Do they do what they were made to do? Can they compete with what’s already on the shelf? The business of usage requires good management and constant evaluation, and a wise prescriptivist, like a smart consultant, can tell you which verbal moves will succeed and which will lead to ruin.
The proper goal of the prescriptive approach is not to dictate but to evaluate, not to cavil but to rectify, not to condemn but to ameliorate. Verbal Advantage will help you clean up your diction and clarify many nebulous distinctions, but I urge you to build on what you learn here by exploring the works of some of the best commentators on style, past and present.
A short list of them would include H. W. Fowler, Bergen Evans, William Strunk and E. B. White (who wrote the famous handbook The Elements of Style), Rudolph Flesch, Wilson Follett, Jacques Barzun, Theodore M. Bernstein, Harry Shaw, Norman Lewis, Edward D. Johnson, William and Mary Morris, J. N. Hook, James J. Kilpatrick, William Zinsser, Constance Hale, Patricia T. O’Conner, Barbara Wallraff, Richard Lederer, Bryan A. Garner, and William Safire. These are some of the experts who have enlightened me, and much of the advice I am sharing with you in this program I have learned from them.
To sum up, the way you use words makes a telling statement about the kind of person you are. And if you want your words to manifest intelligence and confidence, then along with building your vocabulary you must make good usage a priority.
I should also point out that the difference between building your vocabulary and improving your usage is like the difference between buying a piano and knowing how to play it. Possessing the instrument of language does not ensure that you will be able to make music with it. Reading, using your dictionary, and studying Verbal Advantage will give you the linguistic tools you need to tackle the job of communication. But to refine your skill with those tools you will need to heed the advice of the distinguished author, historian, and professor Jacques Barzun.
In his book Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers (1985), Barzun writes that “the price of learning to use words is the development of an acute self-consciousness.
Nor is it enough to pay attention to words only when you face the task of writing—that is like playing the violin only on the night of the concert. You must attend to words when you read, when you speak, when others speak. Words must become ever present in your waking life, an incessant concern, like color and design if the graphic arts matter to you, or pitch and rhythm if it is music, or speed and form if it is athletics. Words, in short, must be there, not unseen and unheard, as they probably are and have been up to now.
