Sartre wrote:
redmanca wrote:
Patrick wrote:
Sweet tap-dancing Jesus, Conor, what have you gotten yourself into?
As an antidote, I suggest the fine novels of Dan Jenkins - especially the ones narrated by Billy Clyde Puckett. I am currently reading "Rude Behavior," which has made me laugh out loud seven times thus far.
If you ever told your cohorts in English Department Land you were reading Jenkins they would first say "Who?" and then, if they looked into it, they would waste no time handing you the broken piece of pottery.
So be wary.
Hah! That's the scary thing: I have no idea what I've gotten myself into, because it is so difficult to understand. At the same time I'm reading Strunk (or White) talking about the concrete rules of our language I'm reading Saussure say that all of language is completely arbitrary and the rules are only rules because they've been rules since someone agreed they would be rules, and not because of some base, logical reason that they should be rules.
My professor's explanation of what Derrida will be saying was even better. Something like: "Derrida will say that what you are reading is what you are reading because what you are actually reading is what you
aren't reading.
*pop* (head)
Conor
Editorial in the NY Times today
by the editor in chief of the American Heritage Dictionary of all people, chiding those who care about grammar and usage. He is particularly concerned about those who try not to split their infinitives, thinks we're all niggling pedants.
That is very interesting, Sartre, thanks for pointing it out. Saussure has something to say about that; in fact, it plays into his hand quite nicely.
There is nothing technically "wrong" with a split infinitive - though many I suppose would disagree. Because of this it is primarily a stylistic objection, much in the same way that one person prefers sonnets because they are neat, tidy, and conform to overt rules and another prefers free verse because it is, well, more free and thus more easily adapted to different situations. (I really don't want to debate poetic forms; I know one can be creative in a sonnet and one can follow strict rules in free verse). Neither poetic form is "correct" in absolute, even though your everyday English teacher/professor might tell you so. It is a stylistic distinction. Even though Strunk hates extraneous words and yells at you from the page to "Omit unnecessary words!" unnecessary words are not incorrect in a concrete way, Strunk just thinks them bad style.
To bring it back to split infinitives, since neither position is technically correct or incorrect, it would be wrong to teach one position as correct. I am aware that for a long time before my schooling (I never heard the rule until my sophomore year in college) split infinitives were in fact taught as concretely incorrect, and so many people learned a
stylistic preference as a
concrete rule. Saussure would call this an "idiom" of the English language. By idiom he means a rule that is taught as a rule that doesn't have any real reason for being a rule (though he later argues that all rules and indeed all of language is the same way). To put it another (hopefully more understandable) way, there is no solid grammatical basis for not splitting infinitives, and so the learner (or speaker or writer) of a language must accept the rule on faith alone and not on fact. This all points to Saussure's idea of the arbitrary nature of language.
I do realize that absolutely no-one asked for that, but I had some time to kill and felt like trying to see if I actually understood what I read.
p.s. Patrick, it looks like I'm becoming one of them!
Conor
