On privilege and language correction

[mrgoodwraith]

My friend W. Scott (soon to be Stacy) Lockwood III is a fellow fan of comedy music and someone whom I respect for the majority of their progressive opinions and for having the courage to come out as transsexual in this current era in which trans people are being vilified for having the satanic urge to...pee in a place where they feel comfortable

Comments

[cellio]

Exactly.

Further: if somebody chooses to express himself in cryptic, non-standard, or LOL-speak ways, and he's not submitting it to me for publication, then he doesn't have to listen to my feedback (and I probably won't offer it anyway, because it's a lost battle). But I am also not obligated to take him seriously, either. And I'm not being classist, racist, albeist, or any other negative -ist by saying so.

Communication: it's what language is for. Everyone should try it.

[zaivala]

While I have nothing to add to your learned discussion and Mr. Lemming's reply, I wanted to be counted on the same side of the issue. It can also be said that I have been employed in the past not only as an editor but as a Senior Editor (which mainly was scheduling which of my editors got which books and ensuring their completion on schedule and at the desired quality level), my level of pedantry may be viewed as tending toward the extreme.

[judifilksign]

As an English teacher, I come across the concept of "How dare you correct my dialect," all of the time. I handle it by acknowledging that the power plays in society are real. I talk about different registers of communication for different purposes, and how they already speak more formally to me in school than they do out with their pals or at home. I tell them that "Knowledge is Power" and that even rich people hire lawyers to navigate the most formal types of communication, that of the legal code, in order to get wills written and themselves defended in court. The more standardized the English, the more seriously they will be taken

[catsittingstill]

I think part of the issue is that it is upper class English that is taken as "correct." So children from upper class families learn it in very young childhood, without effort (or at least with no more effort than language learning usually takes, which, as my mom once pointed out, is considerable effort over several years even for children

[pbristow]

I'm remembering a discussion in one of my acting classes, about clear diction and how important it is to making oneself heard/understood on stage, regardless of whether it's natural for the character or the dialect. Someone used the phrase "the Queen's English", and our teacher reacted with horror: "Oh, dear God no! The Queen's diction is *TERRIBLE*!!! The poor love can't seem to open her jaw more than quarter of an inch!"

=:o}

[tibicina]

Have you seen the research on Shakespearean English as spoken at the time vs. Received Pronunciation? It's fascinating! Turns out, as near as we can tell, original pronunciation ends up being sort of 'sexy pirate', but, among other things, that has huge implications for how one stands and moves and how quickly one speaks. (Original pronunciation productions can cut 15-20 minutes from a play.) Also, they've found a number of puns that no one had realized were in there because they only come out in that accent.

[pbristow]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s&ab_channel=ouLearnonYouTube