Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 58 posts

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

#41

Post by aaronem »

asveikau wrote: post #39

For a guy who is trying to celebrate and identify with (possibly attach himself to) "the masses" for their nonstandard grammar, this guy sure comes off as pretentious. I don't think this is really about those topics. The author would just like everyone to know how smart he is for considering it.

While I don't love the author and carry no brief on his behalf, I would like to point out that "you're pretentious" and "you just want to look smart[er than everybody else]" are, in my experience, the two charges most commonly leveled against one who uses acrolect (the proper name for what Wallace calls "SWE"), by one who is incapable of doing the same.

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

#42

Post by sp332 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #26
sp332 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

CSWE is hard to express yourself in This claim baffles and infuriates me.

It's natural to express my opinions and experiences in a first-person account including emotions. That kind of thing isn't allowed in Wikipedia or textbooks, and is generally discouraged in the NYT and school essays.

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

#43

Post by asveikau »

aaronem wrote: post #41
asveikau wrote: post #39

For a guy who is trying to celebrate and identify with (possibly attach himself to) "the masses" for their nonstandard grammar, this guy sure comes off as pretentious. I don't think this is really about those topics. The author would just like everyone to know how smart he is for considering it.

While I don't love the author and carry no brief on his behalf, I would like to point out that "you're pretentious" and "you just want to look smart[er than everybody else]" are, in my experience, the two charges most commonly leveled against one who uses acrolect (the proper name for what Wallace calls "SWE"), by one who is incapable of doing the same.

Perhaps some do have such a reaction. I don't think this is the case for me specifically. He genuinely comes off as pretentious to me, and as someone who is very deeply interested in language I find the content intellectually vacuous. He hasn't really said anything, just made a few references.

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

#44

Post by sp332 »

aaronem wrote: post #40
sp332 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're writing authoritative, reference-style code, then formal standards may be appropriate. If you're part of a huge project, writing code that is readable by everyone else on the project is simply a pragmatic thing to do. But standards can go too far even in those cases. I once worked on a project where we weren't allowed to depend on order of operations for math operators - we had to put parentheses everywhere…

Granting arguendo that the phrase "self-expression" is useful, you seem to assume such activity is impaired both by the imposition (even the self-imposition) of standards, and by the quest for precision in one's use of language. This assumption strikes me as highly questionable; if anything, lack of standards and disregard for precision in one's effort seems likely to make accurately saying what one means more diffic…

You can be extremely "precise" without conforming to a strict generic format chosen by someone else who didn't know anything about your project. I don't know why you consider conformity to externally-imposed rulesets to be equivalent to accuracy of expression.

Sonnets can be beautiful and meaningful, but imagine what a pain it would be if everything were written that way.

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

#45

Post by aaronem »

Dewie wrote: post #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 disambig…

Say what else you like about Southern American English, but we solve the second-person plural problem quite handily with nominative and oblique y'all, and genitive y'all's.

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

#46

Post by aaronem »

sp332 wrote: post #44
aaronem wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granting arguendo that the phrase "self-expression" is useful, you seem to assume such activity is impaired both by the imposition (even the self-imposition) of standards, and by the quest for precision in one's use of language. This assumption strikes me as highly questionable; if anything, lack of standards and disregard for precision in one's effort seems likely to make accurately saying what one means more diffic…

You can be extremely "precise" without conforming to a strict generic format chosen by someone else who didn't know anything about your project. I don't know why you consider conformity to externally-imposed rulesets to be equivalent to accuracy of expression. Sonnets can be beautiful and meaningful, but imagine what a pain it would be if everything were written that way.

Why assume, as you seem to, that all standards originate outside yourself? Do you not require of yourself a certain level of quality and precision, the degree of both depending on project and audience, when you write either natural language or code?

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

#47

Post by philosophus »

devindotcom wrote: post #10

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…

Agreed, if you are trying to understand the topic and not the author, then injecting non-standard usage and "personality" is simply a distraction. There is something narcissistic about believing your writing should reflect you, rather than your topic.

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

#48

Post by philosophus »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #2

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 also a little unfair to criticize standard English for being largely what is spoken by white people. English is the language of English people. They are white. I would assume that standard Swahili, for example, closely correlates to language as spoken by primarily black people.

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

#49

Post by VladRussian2 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #30
zaroth wrote: 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.

It's an awful lot easier to appreciate if you actually have a dog and have to spend a lot of time deciphering its communications.

So right. Sad people. No doge.

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

#50

Post by sp332 »

aaronem wrote: post #46
sp332 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be extremely "precise" without conforming to a strict generic format chosen by someone else who didn't know anything about your project. I don't know why you consider conformity to externally-imposed rulesets to be equivalent to accuracy of expression. Sonnets can be beautiful and meaningful, but imagine what a pain it would be if everything were written that way.

Why assume, as you seem to, that all standards originate outside yourself? Do you not require of yourself a certain level of quality and precision, the degree of both depending on project and audience, when you write either natural language or code?

Yes, and I feel like I have to translate when I'm writing for a general audience. Anything I write for a general audience is stilted because I have fewer options available.

English is a mix of many different influences, each of which was novel at some point in history. If people want to make up new rules to experiment with (like doge and ragecomics), that's not a bad thing. The more people we have who feel free to experiment, the more options we'll have in deciding what we want language to look like in the future.

Post reply on HN