At Lynne Murphy’s long-ago tweeted suggestion, I listened to a debate between Grant Barrett, of A Way with Words, and Matthew Engel, of the BBC article from a few months ago that complained about American usages infecting British English. Through the first 15 minutes, both men were being quite reasonable, saying things that barely conflicted with each other and agreeing that there wasn’t much difference in their positions. (Largely because Engel had gone away from the bombastic note of his Americanisms article and now seemed genuinely surprised that Barrett thought Engel believed in what he had written.)
And then the floodgates opened. Barrett had just mentioned that when his show gets emails from peevers complaining about some supposed error, he replies with a suggestion that they look into the error, and think about why they dislike it. (Would that I had such patience in my responses!) Barrett noted that the peevers often follow this advice, learn something about how English works, and report that these once-teeth-gnashing usages have become at worst minor annoyances.
Engel didn’t care for this attempt to educate away such prejudices and went on the attack, presenting a disingenuous series of questions intended to reveal that Engel is both older and more British than Barrett. Therefore Engel concludes: “So you have no experience of how British English is spoken except on a brief stay?” Barrett responds: “I study language for a living … from an academic perspective, I have a very good understanding of the differences between the two dialects.” Engel’s response:
“So someone who’s lived in this country, not just me but everybody else who’s responded and supported [my column], they’re non-experts. They’ve lived through the changing of the language, but they’re non-experts. They know nothing about the way that language has changed, but what they need is you to try to teach them.”
I wouldn’t say that non-linguistically-trained language users know nothing of their language, but otherwise, I think Engel’s getting it! Wait, he’s elaborating further:
“I think that’s the most patronizing piece of nonsense I have ever heard in my life.”
Nope, never mind.
I don’t find the stance that experts know more than other people about stuff to be patronizing, but even if Engel does, that’s too bad because it’s, you know, true.* And it’s a rather odd position for Engel to take, since he’s a journalist, and journalism is kinda all about telling people things they don’t know — and often don’t know they don’t know.
Think about it analogically: I’ve been in a lot of motor vehicles, but that doesn’t make me an expert on their history, nor does it qualify me to figure out why the engine pings when it’s cold. I watch a lot (a lot) of football, but I couldn’t design effective plays. I cook a lot, but I’m not a master chef. I’ve walked through rainstorms, but I’m no meteorologist. Language is the same; everyone uses it, but only some people study it.
I don’t think that you have to be a linguist by training to be knowledgeable about English usage, but you do have to think about English scientifically. You need to check against available data when drawing your conclusions. You need to be aware that one’s own knowledge can be spotty or skewed. If you don’t even do those two things, you’re a crummy expert on English usage.
We, all of us, linguists and speakers alike, are unreliable narrators of our linguistic experience. We imagine our usage to be clearer than it actually is.** We have information that varies from spot-on to way off. We don’t realize what we say. If my own mother said that I speak one way, I’d have to look it up to be sure.***
Engel is right on exactly one point: it’s not that speakers of English know nothing of English. It’s just that they don’t know everything. As you readers know from my (occasional?) mistakes, my personal knowledge of English is limited. I was shocked to find out that some people say no end instead of to no end. I didn’t understand the double modal until a few years ago. I suffer from the recency illusion, from an unavoidable preference for Pittsburgh English, from a belief that my usages are probably standard. That’s why when I put together a post, I try not to say “X is right” or “X is wrong” based on my personal intuitions. I do due diligence, look up others’ research on the subject, delve into the archives, and map current usage. Before I say that I do or do not say something, I try to look through my own writings to see if I do, and if so when. Even then, with all of that going into it, I still know there’s a decent chance that I’ll only have part of the story and you will fill in the rest with comments and emails.
To have Engel saying that he and the other peevers have no need for linguists checking their work? Engel, who offered five Americanisms to start his column with only one of them actually coming from America? I’m sorry if he finds it patronizing for Barrett or anyone else to tell him he’s wrong and he ought to have consulted a linguist, but his indignance doesn’t magically make the linguists wrong and him right.
In fact, nothing of Engel’s position makes sense. He’s proposing that experience, not expertise, is sufficient, but I know a lot of people with bad spelling or grammar who are older than I am. Should I abandon the English I use and convert to theirs? After all, they’ve lived through the changes. And how does Engel know about Americanisms? I know he’s older than me, but I don’t think he’s spent as long in the U.S. as I have. Doesn’t he have to defer to me on Americanisms? Sorry, Engel old bean, but you know how you called hospitalize a “vile” word? It’s actually glorious. I know because I have more experience in American English than you.
—
*: There’re separate issues in that many so-called experts are not, that some have axes to grind, and that experts are only experts within their field of expertise, but the fact remains that experts are generally experts and non-experts generally are not.
**: The first time you ever read a transcript of your own speech can be an embarrassing, even unbelievable, affair. We do not speak anywhere near as clearly as we write (excepting people who write badly as well). See, for a not-too-bad example, this snippet of a telephone conversation.
***: Murray, Frazer, and Simon, writing on the usage of “needs done” in the Midwest, had one student tell them that he’d never used the construction in his life and that it was inappropriate for formal writing. Sure enough, he had written it in a paper he had submitted to them.
Motivated Grammar 
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October 6, 2011 at 10:58 am
Jonathon
Great post. It’s surprising how often our intuitions and impressions about language are flatly contradicted by the evidence. During my senior year, I did a research project on the “needs done” construction, and I know for a fact that one of my respondents said she never used it when in fact she uses it quite often.
It certainly feels patronizing to be told that you’re not truly an expert in your own language, especially when you’re a professional writer or editor, but I think there’s also a distinction to be made here: being an expert in writing or editing is not necessarily the same as being an expert in the language, as evidenced by Engel’s mostly bogus list of Americanisms. But a lot of writers and editors think that their professional expertise makes them experts in the language as a whole, which is usually not the case.
October 6, 2011 at 3:14 pm
The Ridger
I am very fond of this Mark Liberman quote:
Also, I have to say that I hate this role of correcting elementary errors of linguistic analysis, or questioning unthinking prescriptions that are logically incoherent, factually wrong and promptly disobeyed by the prescriber. Historians aren’t constantly confronted with people who carry on self-confidently about the rule against adultery in the sixth amendment to the Declamation of Independence, as written by Benjamin Hamilton. Computer scientists aren’t always having to correct people who make bold assertions about the value of Objectivist Programming, as examplified in the HCNL entities stored in Relaxational Databases. The trouble is, most people are much more ignorant about language than they are about history or computer science, but they reckon that because they can talk and read and write, their opinions about talking and reading and writing are as well informed as anybody’s. And since I have DNA, I’m entitled to carry on at length about genetics without bothering to learn anything about it. Not.
October 6, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Ray Girvan
A classic example of the errors that non-expert commentators on language are prone to is Arnold Zwicky’s “recency illusion”: the error of thinking that a usage is new because you’ve only just become aware of it.
October 8, 2011 at 12:18 am
Criminy Jimjams
Believing that one is an expert on a particular language through the familiarity of daily use is not unlike declaring that one is an expert on human physiology thanks to 30-odd years of daily kinesthetic tasks, or that one is a master architect based on spending a great deal of time inside buildings.
October 9, 2011 at 7:44 am
AdoAnnie
Speaking of not knowing our own language, I recall having to take “English” every year from 7th to 12th grade. We studied literature, spelling, grammar, sentence structure, syntax and thesis writing, but I don’t ever recall that we studied English. I think it would be enlightening to add word history to usage. Without the knowledge of our own language to give meaning to our adages and axioms we have the skewed mishmashed words and phrases that pass for media language today. Sorry, one of my peeves.
October 9, 2011 at 8:10 pm
Caomhghín
‘There are a variety of fruits available’ – ‘there is a variety of fruits avaible’ – doesn’t the word variety, being a singular noun, demand the verb, is, in this kind of sentence or is it the word, fruits (plurals), which determines the word, are, be employed.
There is (?) a number of different words which might be cited as alternatives to variety in this context to exemplify the point.
Would appreciate your opinion.
Caomhghín
October 10, 2011 at 4:35 pm
ulyssesmsu
Gabe, don’t say “disingenuous.” Say what you mean–they’re “dishonest.”
October 10, 2011 at 4:40 pm
AdoAnnie
There are a variety of fruit types available. Fruit is available is a variety of types. The variety of fruit available is plentiful and copious. There’s lotsa fruit, dude, go look at it. :-)
October 10, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Caomhghín
I don’t wish to be nit-picking, but the terms American English and British English, quite honestly, annoy me. Which species do Canadians use and which do Scots use.
May I suggest the adoption of the terms US English; and Anglo English, respectively.
October 10, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Caomhghín
‘Variety of fruits’ per se, is not the issue – let me posit a similar construct: There is a number of books on my desk. Therefore, might one say or not correctly say: There are a number of …?
October 10, 2011 at 5:41 pm
The Ridger
I would in fact say “there are a number of books” rather than “there is a number of…” just as “there are none” rather than “there is none”. YMMV, obviously, but I believe the question is one of notional concord: are you thinking of several individual units or one mass?
October 10, 2011 at 5:52 pm
Caomhghín
I would think, mass. Otherwise, I’d say, for example – there are several books… .
Perhaps it’s subjective, only it doesn’t sound right – just!
October 11, 2011 at 12:30 am
Dan M.
@Caomhghín
While it’s up to Britons, Scottish or otherwise, to label the class of English varieties spoken across their land, I must point out that in English (or at least most Englishes, including American English, Canadian English, and British English), the word “American” means things having to do with the United States of America, not the whole of the Americas nor even North America. In this, the English word “American” differs from the Spanish word “Americano”, which means things having to do with one or both of the Americas, making it equivalent to the English word pan-American.
While this meaning of the English word is quirky and perhaps unfortunate (though quite unambiguous to anybody who doesn’t have a bug up their ass), it’s very well-established.
October 11, 2011 at 2:27 am
Caomhghín
re: Dan M.
It’s not a case of ambiguous terms but of terms which are by many deemed to be redolent of past and ongoing imperiality; linguistiç,geopolitical and psychical, etc.
The quaint anal diagnosis proffered is perhaps a case of cross contamination.
Best regards
October 11, 2011 at 5:51 am
Caomhghín
Re: The Ridger.
I get the idea of notional concord – I think.
Do you suppose there could therefore be a process occurring in consciousness at a phenomenal perceptual level – a kind of aural gestalt – or is that too fanciful!
Regards
October 11, 2011 at 7:18 am
Marc Leavitt
I find that most of the rants against “Americanisms” seem to emanate from British nitpickers. At the risk of seeming like a reductionist savage, my first reaction is “Get over it!” The cross-fertilization of the various Englishes adds immeasurably to the richness and facility of expression which characterizes the English language. No chauvinist I; I love BrE expressions. I use them where appropriate. I also study other languages; the effort adds to my comprehension. To borrow a title, “Other Voices, Other Rooms.”:
October 11, 2011 at 6:41 pm
AdoAnnie
Caomhghín, do I understand the problem to be the plural form of the noun? Did you choose the noun ‘fruit’ deliberately? It would seem to me that the problem is in the word fruit, which like sheep, fish, deer etc., is a word that is singular or plural depending on the context and though written in the singular can be placed with a plural verb and noun modifier to denote number. Even though fruit can be written with an s to pluralize, it isn’t necessary. There are many sheep in that flock. That is a huge school of fish. There is a large variety of fruit available. The deer are scarce during hunting season. Most other nouns have a definite plural that should make the verb use more obvious. The book is in the library. The books are on the shelf.
Does that help or am I just way off base in understanding your question?
October 11, 2011 at 6:51 pm
AdoAnnie
PS. I love Britishisms. Back in the day, before I quite smoking, I was in a car with 3 Brits. Knowing that they smoked and wouldn’t mind I pulled out and lit a cigarette. The man next to me gave me a sideways look and ask, “Are you practicing to be a dentist?” I gave him a WTF look and said, “Huh?” He replied, pointing at my cigarette pack, “Only pulling them out one at a time?”
Stunned, I pulled out one for him and asked the other two in the front seat. I wasn’t familiar with the British custom of offering cigarettes, when back in the States I would have asked if anybody minded if I smoked. But I never forgot ‘practicing to be a dentist’ when someone doesn’t share.
October 11, 2011 at 7:45 pm
Caomhghín
One makes use of the term British English (language) because the term, English, can apply to a national description and the language itself; it can be unclear what is ment. English speakers of the north American continent use the term, for example, ‘a British accent’ as thought there were such a phenomenon per se. Such is generally excused and attributed to unawareness of such subleties.
That is partly why I would advocate the general use of the term, Anglo English (language); with or without a hyphen!
October 11, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Caomhghín
The words were merely typical of the class of sentence I was using to illustrate a perceived problem of uncertainty as to which tense of the verb was required in order that the sentence would be intelligible, or a least more so.
To what precisely in the given sentence does verb relate – that’s the question!
I believe the key lies in the collective noun. Let’s take… there is a group of people in my room. If we go on to say… a group of people comes to my room (!!!) Again we might have… there is a lot of people in my room – a lot of people comes to my room.
Should one increase the rent!
October 12, 2011 at 5:24 am
Caomhghín
I wish I could use the second person plural pronoun ye without being stared at. Modern English no longer makes colloquial use of ye. So much the pity, as it would be so useful.
How many times do you find that you have to say, ‘sorry!’ ‘I mean you collectively’, or say, ‘I mean you in general’, and so on. without a second person plural pronoun at your disposal as would befits an otherwise half-decent language you, sorry, ye – could find yeselves in hot water.
October 12, 2011 at 5:43 am
the ridger
@Caomhghín: I think it is precisely the quanitifier that determines the verb’s number. Alas, that’s another thing people don’t agree on. Your use of (!!!) indicates to me that you think “a group comes” is wrong, but it’s absolutely standard in the US (as is “a team comes, a family comes, the government says” etc).
I’m not sure there is any One True Way to determine what number a collective noun is.
October 12, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Caomhghín
When is a majority The majority? Can the term, a majority, even when seemingly being justified, be valid?
October 12, 2011 at 6:58 pm
AdoAnnie
@Caomhghín: this may help with the singular/plural verb:
http://www.whitesmoke.com/subject-verb-agreement-common-errors-in-english
And there are many other sites to google.
October 12, 2011 at 11:10 pm
Caomhghín
Re: The Ridger.
The sentence is not, a group comes… , but, a group of PEOPLE comes. That’s the perceived problem! The verb in this context agrees with the singular noun, group, but does not with the plural, people. Is, people, in this context, properly regarded as a plural; or singular noun? Logically, I suppose it must be so if there is a group of THEM!
Re: AdoAnnie. Grats, I shall check out – whitesmoke.
October 12, 2011 at 11:20 pm
Caomhghín
Checked out…back to the drawing-board!
October 15, 2011 at 8:45 am
Abbie
It is perhaps unfortunate that the term “American” generally means “regarding the United States of America”, and that a general term for the Americas doesn’t exist in English.
I think that we’re usually content to refer to separate parts- North America, Central America, South America. A term for “all of the Americas” would be pretty broad and specialized, as in “Eurasia”, there are simply less contexts in which we need to refer to all of the Americas as one group.
I see nothing wrong with using “American” to refer to the USA, since no other country in the Americas has “American” in its name, and there is no better possessive (or whatever?) term for the United States. United Statesian?
October 15, 2011 at 6:02 pm
AdoAnnie
Depending on the context I use the States as a substitute or US, but it does sound odd to use either of those in front to English. However when speaking of English we are in the minority in the Americas, as Canada and the US are the only two countries on both continents that speak English (ah, I just thought of the Caribbean Islands, many of them use English, but I don’t know how many have English as their primary language) as a primary language (excluding Quebec). Everyone else speaks Spanish, Portuguese or French. So it is probably presumptuous to say American English, maybe US English doesn’t sound so bad.
October 17, 2011 at 3:49 am
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October 18, 2011 at 11:05 am
Daniel
@AdoAnnie: Just a nitpick here, but Belize, which is on the mainland, is also an English-speaking nation.
October 18, 2011 at 4:34 pm
John Lawler
I agree with the Ridger about being tired of popular cluelessness re “English grammar”. Especially the arrogant type. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
The problem is that the school system thinks it’s teaching the English language, when it’s not (except occasionally, and sometimes accidentally, to non-English speakers). English grammar was never taught in English classes; they were always about composition and literature, as they still are. One learned grammar by taking Latin.
Now that nobody takes Latin, all they have in the English Department is the Parts of Speech (e.g, “X is a Noun, so you can’t say “to X something”), and the Catechism of Shibboleths (e.g, “If you end a sentence with a preposition, you’ll go blind!”).
Pretty lame stuff. See http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/ATEG.pdf
October 19, 2011 at 7:15 am
AdoAnnie
Thank you, Daniel, I knew I would miss something in that blanket statement.
Mr. Lawler, just wondering where you went to school as the high school I attended back in the dark ages did teach grammar in English class. We even had a tiny textbook on the subject of grammar. I don’t know when grammar as a separate skill was dropped from the curriculum, but when my daughter attended the same high school there were only composition and literature. The only Latin I ever saw was in the occasional dissection of prefixes and suffixes. I think it was a mistake to drop grammar. But, then I enjoy language and the study of words and the myriad ways of putting them together to create meaning. My bad.
October 20, 2011 at 6:15 am
thesociallinguist
Oh. My. God. Thank you for writing this! It’s amazing how far linguists just *aren’t listened to*, and yet, our work is based on evidence and analysis, rather than introspection and navel-gazing.
For example, I’ve yet to convince someone that ‘I done it’ is a perfectly acceptable construction in non-standard English. It’s a constant uphill struggle….
I put exactly the same question to Deborah Tannen (Why don’t people listen to linguists?) at a recent conference (Interdisciplinary Linguistics Conference at Belfast) and the consensus was that because people are native speakers, they believe that this gives them the power to be able to analyse their language better than a linguist ever could.
Just out of curiosity, how many people get blank stares when they tell people that they’re a linguist? I get it almost every single time I tell someone. I surely can’t be alone in this!?
October 20, 2011 at 9:42 am
Ray Girvan
@ John Lawler: “Pretty lame stuff. See …”
That’s an interesting paper, but is it representative? It looks like a specialist paper for top-stream pupils being crammed for university.
For what it’s worth, grammar was a large part of the English Language syllabus when I was doing O-Levels (late 1960s), and it must have been pretty good because I came out of it without being indoctrinated with the usual shibboleths. English Literature was a separate subject, as was Latin.
October 20, 2011 at 10:06 am
thesociallinguist
Sorry, it was a question directed at Professor Deborah Cameron, not Professor Deborah Tannen…
October 20, 2011 at 9:37 pm
Caomhghín
Just a crazy question: Does a lanquage speak a community which speaks the language in question? Possibly more one for socio-linguistics or philosophy, but, what the heck!
October 21, 2011 at 10:19 am
AdoAnnie
Uh . . .say that again, please, and make it make sense.
October 21, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Caomhghín
A common-language community provides a repository and dynamic sphere for a given language. Since the individual is largely dependent on this community to obtain and reciprocate the language; and the community is dependent on the individual likewise to ensure the language, where does the language actually reside! It must emerge conceptually from and reside in the dynamic of the community. It might be said, therefore, that the language speaks the community!
October 24, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Caomhghín
Uh…?
October 24, 2011 at 9:33 pm
Caomhghín
What’s with the like of: “I don’t do nervous!”; “They don’t do embarressed!”, and so on! Ephemera or what?
Have such expressions ‘infiltrated’ the language from mock imitation or have they been around a long time in the US-idiom and are presently doing the rounds in other English-language idioms?
November 4, 2011 at 2:31 pm
AdoAnnie
Affectation. Maybe not that particular set of phrases, but ones like them have gone in and out of style in the English language probably since it was spoken. The in-crowd develops a jargon to show that they are the in crowd, then wanna-bes imitate the new speak to show that they, too, are cool.
Keanu Reeve, even in the most serious movie roll still can’t quite get rid of his surfer dude speak. In my generation it was the beginning of Valley Girl speak. Nauseating.Thirty yrs later I still hear remnants of the jargon and particular intonation when my daughter wants to be sarcky. The other day she brought over her laundry and I began separating wash and wear from cold wash and she gave me a raised eyebrow, tossed her head and said (Imagine Marisa Tomei) “Oh, right, you SORT”
Good thing I wasn’t sitting in front of my monitor with a mouth full of coffee.
Don’t take life so seriously, it will only give you ulsers.
April 11, 2012 at 9:55 am
Adrian
@ Abbie.
‘American’ may mean “pertaining to or belonging to (or a citizen of) the United States” to some people, but it unquestionably also means “pertaining to or belonging to (or a denizen of) North America and South America (and Central America if you like, though that is not a continent).
…and the descriptivist in you should notice that with many native Spanish-speakers learning English, the terms ‘Americano’ (exclusively for North + South America) and ‘Estadounidense’ (for United States…and a spot-on match with your half-hearted ‘United Statesian’ suggestion) could easily come to impact English definitions and terms.
I (a native English-speaker), for one, never use ‘American’ in reference to just the United States. For the adjective form I actually do use ‘Unitedstatesian’ in jest once in a while, but for the most part I just use “from the United States” or simply “US”.
For the noun form I use “US citizen”. …but if you can’t stand the extra syllable, you could just say “Yank”.