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Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

techcrunch.com

11–20 of 58 posts

Re: Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

#11
post #4

tl;dr An article espousing the merits of postmodernism and the obsolescence of so-called "Standard White English" (formal English), while also being written largely in SWE itself. Apparently, the "masses" read Reddit. Writing in formal academic English is for privileged white people and should be phased in favor of broken, anarchic, meme-inspired vernaculars, except on Wikipedia. How charming.

I don't have downvote privileges. But I found this comment to be condescending without adding anything to the discussion but sarcasm.

How interesting. I do have downvote privileges and found your comment to add literally nothing at all to the conversation.

Re: Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

#12
This article seems to be anti-establishment for the sake of being anti-establishment.

Intentionally "broken" English can be fun and cute and equally valid and expressive as standard English - if not for the adoption of it - but I don't see much that actually improves on more standard English, in a more-or-less objective way. An improvement might be to promote a gender-neutral pronoun ('they' for example) and disambiguating "you" when it is unclear if you are talking about singular you, personal you or 'general' you.

Or maybe this is totally unrelated to what the author is talking about.

Re: Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

#13

I have my own long, long column I'm working on (for TechCrunch, no less) on this topic. Nice to see Jon chiming in, but I think he dismisses the usefulness of the type of essentially formal prose being replaced by more conversational stuff. If you ask me, it's important to consider the strengths of the old way as well as the new one, which is what I'm attempting to do (4000 words and counting...). Also, I disagree wi…

And we call that poetry.

Re: Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

#14
I'm willing to wager that future historians (combing, perhaps, through ancient metal disks found in strange sort of mausoleum in Utah) are going to be greatly annoyed at deciphering communications from current times.

One of the annoying side-effects of memes (doge, le, whatever the next thing from 4chan is) is that they put very heavy context into whatever uses them--they shade the meaning in a very particular way, and once you are lacking that context it becomes very hard to pull out meaningful information.

Re: Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

#15
post #5

"Doge" is even more childish and cancerous than ragecomics. In 2 years most of us will try to forget how popular it once was.

Still don't understand if it's supposed to be pronounced as dog, doggie, dougue. But perhaps that's the point? Either way I've had quite enough of it.

Re: Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

#16

I have my own long, long column I'm working on (for TechCrunch, no less) on this topic. Nice to see Jon chiming in, but I think he dismisses the usefulness of the type of essentially formal prose being replaced by more conversational stuff. If you ask me, it's important to consider the strengths of the old way as well as the new one, which is what I'm attempting to do (4000 words and counting...). Also, I disagree wi…

Should we not be bending these cold, standardized, "agreed-upon meanings and relationships" anyway? Is that not what the great English authors have done?

Also, the title for this article is god-awful. All of the meme plugs make his point hard to understand, not easier. There is tremendous distinction between stupid quips that can be dropped anywhere and creative use of the English language. The author seems quite fond of the former.

Re: Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

#17
post #15
post #5

"Doge" is even more childish and cancerous than ragecomics. In 2 years most of us will try to forget how popular it once was.

Still don't understand if it's supposed to be pronounced as dog, doggie, dougue. But perhaps that's the point? Either way I've had quite enough of it.

First time I heard of it was in the context of dogecoin which I assumed was something inspired by the Venetian Republic.

Re: Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

#18
post #13

I have my own long, long column I'm working on (for TechCrunch, no less) on this topic. Nice to see Jon chiming in, but I think he dismisses the usefulness of the type of essentially formal prose being replaced by more conversational stuff. If you ask me, it's important to consider the strengths of the old way as well as the new one, which is what I'm attempting to do (4000 words and counting...). Also, I disagree wi…

And we call that poetry.

Yep: http://www.waywordradio.org/mezangelle_1/.

Re: Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

#19
post #17
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still don't understand if it's supposed to be pronounced as dog, doggie, dougue. But perhaps that's the point? Either way I've had quite enough of it.

First time I heard of it was in the context of dogecoin which I assumed was something inspired by the Venetian Republic.

such ignorant, so confuse, nice doge

wow

Re: Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

#20
post #7

tl;dr An article espousing the merits of postmodernism and the obsolescence of so-called "Standard White English" (formal English), while also being written largely in SWE itself. Apparently, the "masses" read Reddit. Writing in formal academic English is for privileged white people and should be phased in favor of broken, anarchic, meme-inspired vernaculars, except on Wikipedia. How charming.

It's a piece in favor of writing however you want to because CSWE is hard to express yourself in. It's not really in favor of meme-inspired vernacular ("a horrific mess") but maybe it's still better than constraining ourselves to formal English. I'm not sure I agree with the part about people being mistrusted just because they speak that way though.

Would you make the same argument for programming languages? Should anyone feel free to code in whatever "vernacular" style he please, because living up to a defined standard makes it "hard to express [one]self"?

No doubt someone will attempt the argument that there is a qualitative difference between a language in which one speaks to a computer, and that in which one speaks to other people, but in this case I contend it's a distinction without a difference. The very reason why coding standards exist, after all, is because what we write in programming languages must be understandable to other people, no less than to the computer, and supine permissiveness as regards writing style impairs the legibility of one's code for the other people who must also read it.

Granted, it takes more effort to live up to the coding style required by whatever project one happens to be working on, just as it takes more effort to express a thought in Wallace's "SWE" than in whatever corrupt vernacular happens to be one's native pidgin. In exchange for this additional effort, one produces a result which is both more generally legible and more likely to be taken seriously. (On that latter point in particular -- would you have read this far if I were writing, not in that acrolect Wallace and his latter-day imitator so deride, but rather in my native Southern American English? Don't seem any too likely to me.)

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