I’m a language and writing teacher with diverse classrooms of multilingual students, and I frame conversations about language norms as white supremacist. Is there such a thing as “Standard English”? Who are the gatekeepers? Language use is always contextual. My job is to help students develop the rhetorical awareness they need to communicate effectively across a range of social and professional contexts. So conversations like this one are always interesting to me. What do our language choices (and pet peeves) reveal about us? Languages are organic and dynamic and always changing. Thank you for this thought-provoking conversation!
I used to feel so antsy and angry and reactive when someone used a word "wrong" and would obnoxiously lecture people about it in public. It took a lot of un-learning, including a college class on linguistics (language is something we all create together!), reading a powerful critique of Strunk and White (wish I could remember where that was published), years of writing on the internet and seeing how the power of language actually works in practice, making close friends who are both dyslexic and some of the most brilliant people I've ever met, growing older and humbler, reading about white supremacy and the myths of perfection and objectivity, and, the final nail in the coffin, getting a job as a book editor, which made me realize that perfect grammar is a cost center and not why most people buy, love, or care about books. I'm proud to say that seeing a misplaced apostrophe no longer bugs me at all, and though I sometimes feel that familiar nails-on-chalkboard sensation when someone uses a word to mean something other than what I expect it to, most of the time (if I've had enough to eat) I can convert that to curiosity and wonder, which I can safely report is way more fun than the alternative. Language is generative! People are taking the means of communication into our own hands all the time, and that's freaking cool.
I have not noticed the phrase that irks you so much. "Very unique" used to irritate me, but I've let that go. Every time someone uses the word "decimate"to mean total destruction, I want to tell them it means killing one out of ten, and ii comes from the Roman practice of punishing a disobedient legion. But I resist, because I want to have friends!
Fascinating quibble! (I love linguistic quibbles.)
Speaking as both a physicist and a musician, resonance generally has driver and driven, a source and a sink, an active element and a passive element, and the driver is where primary energy is converted to provide the vibration that serves as the source of the resonance, while the driven is carried along with the driver and disperses the energy (though it may also amplify the energy by "entraining" its own energy with the driver.) Resonance is a transfer (or flow) of energy.
To say, "That resonates with me," is to claim that the flow of energy is from me to "that."
To say, "I resonate with that," is to claim that the flow of energy is from "that" to me.
As a musician, I expect to be providing the primary energy, and my goal is to get my instrument, and the audience, to resonate with me. I draw the bow across the violin string. The sound post inside the violin distributes that vibration to the entire instrument, and I pour more energy into the bow to make it project further. It moves the audience, and they begin to tap their feet, sway in time, synchronizing their own energy to amplify my energy. The audience resonates with me.
There is a kind of narcissism in the expression "That resonates with me." I become, in whatever way, the master, and the universe is my slave.
"I resonate with that," is what the audience would say as they are tapping their feet to my fiddling.
Donald Trump, the wannabe puppet-master, would say, "The Public resonates with me." The Trump acolyte would say, "I resonate with Donald Trump."
I don't see an abuse of language here. Instead, I see two entirely different statements.
Interestingly, I think many (or most) public statements reverse this through the subterfuge of false humility. I suspect Trump would say, "I resonate with the public," to claim that "I am a man of the people. I do only what the people demand of me. I speak the voice of the people." Musicians do much the same: no one likes a musician with a swollen ego. But to be successful as a politician or a musician, you must force the people to resonate with you, if only for a single election or concert.
I used the phrase (descriptor?) ‘low key’ (I was low-key frustrated… or something along those lines) and my Gen Z son stopped short, looked thoughtful and then bemused, and then told me it was a Gen Z thing, ‘low key’, where had I read it (picked it up)? LOL. I said, oh honey, Gen Z didn’t invent ‘low key’. 😊
I'm a college literature professor. And elder-adjacent, into the bargain. The grammatical phrase "she could of gotten there on time..." Which is how students write out "could've" (or would've or etc). They stare at me in utter confusion when they start to answer analytic questions with "I feel that..." and I say "nope, sorry, what is it that you *think* ... b/c apparently no one has explained to them that think & feel are not, in fact, synonyms)...? There's more, so much more, all of which I try to be compassionate about and patient and etc etc ... But the one that takes the cake was one of my college roommates who said "oh that doesn't qualm me" or "I'm not qualmed about that..." NO NO NO HOLLY YOU CANNOT SAY THAT.
I have teen/tween daughters and (like every generation) they have co-opted words to mean something different. "Preppy" is the main thing. Sephora is preppy. Lululemon is preppy. Stanley Cups are preppy. "Aesthetic" to them just means it looks nice. Another is "coquette". To them it means anything with a bow on it. There are several others but I am guessing anyone in the orbit of a person this age might be nodding their head right about now....
I used to be really annoyed by other people’s mistakes (even though I didn’t recognize a lot of mistakes you mentioned in the article). I read about how correcting grammar is part of the white supremacy and needing to be in control. This opened my mind and helped me be less judgmental.
For me, it’s the “I” and “Me” mixups! I’m not a grammar nerd/policeman and I occasionally have to correct myself (mentally saying “is it me or I here?”) but the other day I heard a published writer say “Steve and I’s” and my jaw hit the floor!
I didn't take on the hyper-awareness of grammar usage until I started hearing "impactful" in the early 00's. It made my brain waves stutter - impactful? "Her contribution to the field was impactful" - not significant? Not revolutionary? Not "had impact?" I kept it in my back pocket as a pet annoyance for years, until its usage became so mainstream that dictionaries started to include it. And much like the COVID years shook long-standing ideas about formal systems of work, I just stopped caring about words - does the word clearly communicate one's thoughts? Cool. Make up all the words - they're all fucking made up at some point, why not now?
As a (now-retired) corporate communications professional, I have so many pets peeves from editing the work of less-experienced writers. My biggest one right now (ask me again tomorrow —it might change!) is the use of "disinterested" when the writer means "uninterested." I am realistic enough to know that those words may be undergoing a "literally" shift, but damn—we need "disinterested " to remain objective. Disinterested should have no skin in the game. We should trust disinterested to remain above the fray, while still paying attention. Current example: The Trump jurors should be disinterested but definitely *not* uninterested. 😄
I’m down with the idea that grammar is descriptive rather than prescriptive, enforcing “correct” grammar is a classist and racist cudgel that does the opposite of promoting mutual understanding, living languages are constantly evolving and that’s a beautiful thing…
However. I get stuck on the new-ish explosion of nouns used as verbs. It feels very rooted in late capitalist tech startup culture to me. Presenting a *thing* as an *action* perpetuates the illusion of empowerment and agency as attainable through purchasing, while actually contributing to the concentration of power among the super-wealthy and restricting the agency of everyone else.
For some reason, “gifting” is the noun-as-verb that bothers me the most. “I gifted that to her” is my fingernails on a chalkboard phrase. You can just say GAVE! I guess that doesn’t quite connote the special trappings and presentation of a gift, but those trappings are also a way to sell more stuff and generate more waste, and they’re also a domestic obligation that disproportionately falls on women.
This is definitely my crankiest take, and one I have not managed to work all the way through.
My company's founder has a grammar topic at every monthly all hands meeting and many of them do ultimately come across as pedantic. Unfortunately, some of them also feel very classist or racist, especially when we talk about pronunciation alongside grammar ("picture" being pronounced as "pitcher"). While I'm fairly precious about my own grammar and pronunciation, I have found peace with simply letting go of how others say things. As long as they are able to effectively get their point across, I try to move on and not let myself stew on it.
As someone who also struggles with the extent to which she should or shouldn’t be a grammar pedant, I’m surprised you didn’t mention the phrase I think is responsible for the confusion. These people mean “I IDENTIFY with that.” It’s similar to another mixup I hear all the time: “relish IN” when they mean relish OR revel in. This seems like such chickenshit stuff to be irked by when our world is melting, and yet…
Copyediting jobs are going the way of the dinosaurs, like so many other jobs in journalism. If people don’t see these phrases used correctly in print, the ubiquitous misuse begins to sound right and then they think the grammatically correct version is wrong (hello “between you and I” 🫠)
In any case, thank you Anne, it was fun to let my elitist snob guard down while reading this.
I would love to encourage you all to join my crusade against the redundancy of “Thank you in advance.”
Hear me out: it’s presumptuous. It’s lazy (no thank you AFTER the task has been completed?). And it doesn’t do anything that a plain old “thank you” wouldn’t do.
It’s a losing battle! And I’ll be honest, I’m NOT working through it. I’m going to continue to be annoyed by and judgy about it until I blessedly have to stop responding to emails.
I’m a language and writing teacher with diverse classrooms of multilingual students, and I frame conversations about language norms as white supremacist. Is there such a thing as “Standard English”? Who are the gatekeepers? Language use is always contextual. My job is to help students develop the rhetorical awareness they need to communicate effectively across a range of social and professional contexts. So conversations like this one are always interesting to me. What do our language choices (and pet peeves) reveal about us? Languages are organic and dynamic and always changing. Thank you for this thought-provoking conversation!
I used to feel so antsy and angry and reactive when someone used a word "wrong" and would obnoxiously lecture people about it in public. It took a lot of un-learning, including a college class on linguistics (language is something we all create together!), reading a powerful critique of Strunk and White (wish I could remember where that was published), years of writing on the internet and seeing how the power of language actually works in practice, making close friends who are both dyslexic and some of the most brilliant people I've ever met, growing older and humbler, reading about white supremacy and the myths of perfection and objectivity, and, the final nail in the coffin, getting a job as a book editor, which made me realize that perfect grammar is a cost center and not why most people buy, love, or care about books. I'm proud to say that seeing a misplaced apostrophe no longer bugs me at all, and though I sometimes feel that familiar nails-on-chalkboard sensation when someone uses a word to mean something other than what I expect it to, most of the time (if I've had enough to eat) I can convert that to curiosity and wonder, which I can safely report is way more fun than the alternative. Language is generative! People are taking the means of communication into our own hands all the time, and that's freaking cool.
I have not noticed the phrase that irks you so much. "Very unique" used to irritate me, but I've let that go. Every time someone uses the word "decimate"to mean total destruction, I want to tell them it means killing one out of ten, and ii comes from the Roman practice of punishing a disobedient legion. But I resist, because I want to have friends!
Fascinating quibble! (I love linguistic quibbles.)
Speaking as both a physicist and a musician, resonance generally has driver and driven, a source and a sink, an active element and a passive element, and the driver is where primary energy is converted to provide the vibration that serves as the source of the resonance, while the driven is carried along with the driver and disperses the energy (though it may also amplify the energy by "entraining" its own energy with the driver.) Resonance is a transfer (or flow) of energy.
To say, "That resonates with me," is to claim that the flow of energy is from me to "that."
To say, "I resonate with that," is to claim that the flow of energy is from "that" to me.
As a musician, I expect to be providing the primary energy, and my goal is to get my instrument, and the audience, to resonate with me. I draw the bow across the violin string. The sound post inside the violin distributes that vibration to the entire instrument, and I pour more energy into the bow to make it project further. It moves the audience, and they begin to tap their feet, sway in time, synchronizing their own energy to amplify my energy. The audience resonates with me.
There is a kind of narcissism in the expression "That resonates with me." I become, in whatever way, the master, and the universe is my slave.
"I resonate with that," is what the audience would say as they are tapping their feet to my fiddling.
Donald Trump, the wannabe puppet-master, would say, "The Public resonates with me." The Trump acolyte would say, "I resonate with Donald Trump."
I don't see an abuse of language here. Instead, I see two entirely different statements.
Interestingly, I think many (or most) public statements reverse this through the subterfuge of false humility. I suspect Trump would say, "I resonate with the public," to claim that "I am a man of the people. I do only what the people demand of me. I speak the voice of the people." Musicians do much the same: no one likes a musician with a swollen ego. But to be successful as a politician or a musician, you must force the people to resonate with you, if only for a single election or concert.
I used the phrase (descriptor?) ‘low key’ (I was low-key frustrated… or something along those lines) and my Gen Z son stopped short, looked thoughtful and then bemused, and then told me it was a Gen Z thing, ‘low key’, where had I read it (picked it up)? LOL. I said, oh honey, Gen Z didn’t invent ‘low key’. 😊
I'm a college literature professor. And elder-adjacent, into the bargain. The grammatical phrase "she could of gotten there on time..." Which is how students write out "could've" (or would've or etc). They stare at me in utter confusion when they start to answer analytic questions with "I feel that..." and I say "nope, sorry, what is it that you *think* ... b/c apparently no one has explained to them that think & feel are not, in fact, synonyms)...? There's more, so much more, all of which I try to be compassionate about and patient and etc etc ... But the one that takes the cake was one of my college roommates who said "oh that doesn't qualm me" or "I'm not qualmed about that..." NO NO NO HOLLY YOU CANNOT SAY THAT.
I have teen/tween daughters and (like every generation) they have co-opted words to mean something different. "Preppy" is the main thing. Sephora is preppy. Lululemon is preppy. Stanley Cups are preppy. "Aesthetic" to them just means it looks nice. Another is "coquette". To them it means anything with a bow on it. There are several others but I am guessing anyone in the orbit of a person this age might be nodding their head right about now....
I used to be really annoyed by other people’s mistakes (even though I didn’t recognize a lot of mistakes you mentioned in the article). I read about how correcting grammar is part of the white supremacy and needing to be in control. This opened my mind and helped me be less judgmental.
https://www.msudenver.edu/writing-center/faculty-resources/linguistic-white-supremacy/
For me, it’s the “I” and “Me” mixups! I’m not a grammar nerd/policeman and I occasionally have to correct myself (mentally saying “is it me or I here?”) but the other day I heard a published writer say “Steve and I’s” and my jaw hit the floor!
I didn't take on the hyper-awareness of grammar usage until I started hearing "impactful" in the early 00's. It made my brain waves stutter - impactful? "Her contribution to the field was impactful" - not significant? Not revolutionary? Not "had impact?" I kept it in my back pocket as a pet annoyance for years, until its usage became so mainstream that dictionaries started to include it. And much like the COVID years shook long-standing ideas about formal systems of work, I just stopped caring about words - does the word clearly communicate one's thoughts? Cool. Make up all the words - they're all fucking made up at some point, why not now?
As a (now-retired) corporate communications professional, I have so many pets peeves from editing the work of less-experienced writers. My biggest one right now (ask me again tomorrow —it might change!) is the use of "disinterested" when the writer means "uninterested." I am realistic enough to know that those words may be undergoing a "literally" shift, but damn—we need "disinterested " to remain objective. Disinterested should have no skin in the game. We should trust disinterested to remain above the fray, while still paying attention. Current example: The Trump jurors should be disinterested but definitely *not* uninterested. 😄
I’m down with the idea that grammar is descriptive rather than prescriptive, enforcing “correct” grammar is a classist and racist cudgel that does the opposite of promoting mutual understanding, living languages are constantly evolving and that’s a beautiful thing…
However. I get stuck on the new-ish explosion of nouns used as verbs. It feels very rooted in late capitalist tech startup culture to me. Presenting a *thing* as an *action* perpetuates the illusion of empowerment and agency as attainable through purchasing, while actually contributing to the concentration of power among the super-wealthy and restricting the agency of everyone else.
For some reason, “gifting” is the noun-as-verb that bothers me the most. “I gifted that to her” is my fingernails on a chalkboard phrase. You can just say GAVE! I guess that doesn’t quite connote the special trappings and presentation of a gift, but those trappings are also a way to sell more stuff and generate more waste, and they’re also a domestic obligation that disproportionately falls on women.
This is definitely my crankiest take, and one I have not managed to work all the way through.
My company's founder has a grammar topic at every monthly all hands meeting and many of them do ultimately come across as pedantic. Unfortunately, some of them also feel very classist or racist, especially when we talk about pronunciation alongside grammar ("picture" being pronounced as "pitcher"). While I'm fairly precious about my own grammar and pronunciation, I have found peace with simply letting go of how others say things. As long as they are able to effectively get their point across, I try to move on and not let myself stew on it.
As someone who also struggles with the extent to which she should or shouldn’t be a grammar pedant, I’m surprised you didn’t mention the phrase I think is responsible for the confusion. These people mean “I IDENTIFY with that.” It’s similar to another mixup I hear all the time: “relish IN” when they mean relish OR revel in. This seems like such chickenshit stuff to be irked by when our world is melting, and yet…
Copyediting jobs are going the way of the dinosaurs, like so many other jobs in journalism. If people don’t see these phrases used correctly in print, the ubiquitous misuse begins to sound right and then they think the grammatically correct version is wrong (hello “between you and I” 🫠)
In any case, thank you Anne, it was fun to let my elitist snob guard down while reading this.
I would love to encourage you all to join my crusade against the redundancy of “Thank you in advance.”
Hear me out: it’s presumptuous. It’s lazy (no thank you AFTER the task has been completed?). And it doesn’t do anything that a plain old “thank you” wouldn’t do.
It’s a losing battle! And I’ll be honest, I’m NOT working through it. I’m going to continue to be annoyed by and judgy about it until I blessedly have to stop responding to emails.
I’m completely in love with your ability to hold a grammatical grudge at this level — further solidifies this as a safe place lol