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Privilege is bad grammar

tadaima.bearblog.dev

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Re: Privilege is bad grammar

#71

Post by vunderba »

From the article:

> It's almost as if, once you get to a certain level of power, you no longer need to try.

It’s relative to the power level difference between the two parties.

We’re talking about someone (your boss) who doesn’t really need to present an appearance of professionalism to their proverbial lowly underlings.

As slapdash as their response to you might appear - if you were to observe that same person composing a reply to the CEO, I'd wager that all the hallmarks of grammatical precision and professionalism would be back in spades.

Re: Privilege is bad grammar

#73

Post by dostick »

I am more appalled that all those emails have that footer that says - if you’re not intended recipient you should delete immediately. Yet people see it and just copy those emails. No respect for the legal disclaimer. Now they can all be sued for ignoring that legal disclaimer, I suppose they will face justice sooner than all those people in emails.

Re: Privilege is bad grammar

#74

Post by athenot »

bluedino wrote: post #21

I had a boss once who had "this is sent from my phone, please excuse any spelling or grammar" as his email signature

A more appropriate signature would be "Please excuse any auto-correct errors that my ducking phone might have added."

Re: Privilege is bad grammar

#75

Post by Telemakhos »

bananaflag wrote: post #7

What is sad is that these people from the start think of good grammar as an effort to "look professional" (which they can then discard), and not as an effort to be clear, an effort which fits into the basic respect one gives other people.

That's what's taught in a lot of linguistics and language classes now: rules of spelling and grammar are power games designed to perpetuate one culture while repressing others, rather than tools for clarifying thought. It's fallout from the postmodern search for power dynamics in all things.

A friend recently brought up Orwell's essay on "Politics and the English Language" [0] and the Merriam Webster's Word Matters Podcast episode on it [1]. She had "read" without understanding the former and had listened with credulity to the latter. The podcast savages Orwell for not understanding "how language in general and English in particular actually works" and for his "absolutism" but especially for violating all of his precepts in his essay. Had either my friend or the podcasters bothered to read the essay carefully, they would have found that Orwell explains that he did so deliberately. When I asked my friend to summarize Orwell's essay and distill it to a single thesis, she replied that he was simply prescriptivist and wanted to tell people what to do. That's what the podcast got out of it too. For example, from the podcast:

> A big part of the conversations that we've all had with members of the public or strangers, people who correspond with a dictionary in one way or another, is some kind of membership of a club. "You care about language in the way that I do." There is absolutely a huge moral component that is imposed upon that. We always are judging others by their use of language. We are always judged by our use of language, by the way we spell, by the way we pronounce words. That's just a simple human fact. It's easier for us as professionals to separate that from culture.

The last sentence reminds me of a feedback loop: the "professionals" claim power based on the fact that they see the exercise of power in language rather than on how to use language for communicating clearly. This is how we get to a point where good grammar is a tool for "looking professional" rather than speaking and writing clearly.

I walked my friend back through the actual essay and asked her what Orwell wanted from each point, and she realized that it was, in fact, clarity, not power. Orwell wanted to challenge his readers to think about what they wanted to say before saying it, so that they could say what they meant rather than repeating what they heard commonly said (a note could be made here about large language models and probability).

[0] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-matters-podcast/episode...

Re: Privilege is bad grammar

#76

Post by bonoboTP »

apsurd wrote: post #59
bonoboTP wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can try it and sometimes it works, but generally it's hard to imitate well. You have to not give a fuck about the right things. The imitators who just don't give a fuck about anything will stumble on something genuinely important. Like the cool guy at school who doesn't give a fuck about what the teachers say will have to give a fuck about his friends and the community around him, to the skills that he gets his…

Well I agree and support that! Everyone cares about something. That's good and healthy. There is a ton of value in intentionality. I realize I'm defending against this idea that if you don't do a given thing it must mean you really, really care about signaling that you'd never be caught doing that thing. You want to be caught signaling that you aren't doing it! Of course that's true for some, many even. It's also tru…

Yes, overthinking this is also possible. I've had bosses who type correctly capitalized, with punctuation and paragraphs, and it's simply their style, not much else to read into it. But sometimes it can indicate a certain pedantic busybody personality who misses the forest for the trees and can be a pain in the ass to interact with.

Re: Privilege is bad grammar

#77

Post by bonoboTP »

bananaflag wrote: post #7

What is sad is that these people from the start think of good grammar as an effort to "look professional" (which they can then discard), and not as an effort to be clear, an effort which fits into the basic respect one gives other people.

People are always impressed by how formal and informal tone and relative status is encoded in East Asian languages and how English doesn't have this and is supposedly egalitarian. Here's an example to show how it does exist also in English! Social relations are going to be expressed somehow. It's just how human culture works. The lower status person typically uses longer, more elaborate phrasing, while the higher status person blurts shorter ones. I wouldn't be surprised if equivalents exist in animals too.

Re: Privilege is bad grammar

#78

Post by JumpCrisscross »

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #50
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wear ratty old clothes with holes in them, and nobody will dare to question it because I'm the important one here I live in a wealthy town. It’s less sinister than explicit counter signaling. More that I’ll wear comfortable clothes until they wear out because I have better things to do with my time than shop, and I don’t need to use dress anymore to get the access I want and need.

This isnt perfect. Our household income is probably 500k/yr and growing in a city with an average income of ~100k+. If I wear nice stuff to the park with the kids, I'm noticed. If I wear raggy gym clothes, I'm ignored. My best guess is that comfortable clothes are necessary but you also need something high value in addition. New shoes or expensive outerwear that 'your wife bought'.

> My best guess is that comfortable clothes are necessary but you also need something high value in addition

I’m just a regular. The point is I’m not signaling anything, I’m just not bothering with a signal because I have other things (namely, being recognized) that will e.g. ensure I get a table even if it’s a busy night.

If I go to Vegas I may grab a silk shirt because, yes, my service experience absolutely varies based on that, and I don’t want to have to wait until they see what I order or get to the check-in counter to start being paid attention to. (Which is annoying. And I prefer my t-shirts with cat holes in them. But I don’t like waiting in lines more than I dislike having to do my hair.)

(I do maybe counter signal in Palo Alto, where I refuse to wear a blazer or a Palo-Alto-grey hoodie. But that’s less of a power move than me inviting attention as a now outsider.)

Re: Privilege is bad grammar

#79

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bonoboTP wrote: post #35
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wear ratty old clothes with holes in them, and nobody will dare to question it because I'm the important one here I live in a wealthy town. It’s less sinister than explicit counter signaling. More that I’ll wear comfortable clothes until they wear out because I have better things to do with my time than shop, and I don’t need to use dress anymore to get the access I want and need.

Not having to care is often part of the countersignaling. An honest signal doesn't always take effort. In fact it's the tryhard imitators that have to expend effort emulating this. The real deal is effortless and comes naturally. The silverback gorilla can come across as scary and formidable even when its just lazing around not trying to look intimidating. It's just big, without spending thought cycles on having to a…

> Not having to care is often part of the countersignaling

If it’s used to signal, yes. The absence of a signal can be a signal. Or it can blend into the background. My point is wealthy folks wearing ordinary, loved clothes can be either, and in many cases it’s honestly just not giving a fuck and blending in with everyone else by happenstance.

Re: Privilege is bad grammar

#80

Post by robocat »

bonoboTP wrote: post #9
StevenWaterman wrote: post #4

This is almost textbook countersignalling. The same as: - Signalling: I dress more formally than everyone else to make up for the fact I'm less professional in other ways - No signalling: I dress like everyone else because I am like everyone else - Countersignalling: I wear ratty old clothes with holes in them, and nobody will dare to question it because I'm the important one here

On the positive side of this, research papers by competent people read very clearly with readable sentences, while those who are afraid that their content doesn't quite cut it, litter it with jargon, long complicated sentences, hoping that by making things hard, they will look smart. But to expand on the spelling topic, good spelling and grammar is now free with AI tools. It no longer signals being educated. Informal…

> Informal tone and mistakes actually signal that the message was written by a human

Except that this signal is now being abused. People add into the prompts requesting a few typos. And requesting an informal style.

There was a guy complaining about AI generated comments on substack, where the guy had noticed the pattern of spelling mistakes in the AI responses. It is common enough now.

But yes, typos do match the writer - you can still notice certain mistakes that a human might make that an AI wouldn't generate. Humans are good at catching certain errors but not others, so there is a large bias in the mistakes they miss. And keyboard typos are different from touch autoincorrection. AI generated typos have their own flavour.

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