The Solution to
Poor Pedantry is...
More, Better Pedantry
Bück Würm,
E. G. Ghed,
and Petra Gogue
The Meta-Pedantry Association
Division of Philology and Linguistics
Pedants are traditionally seen by the general populace as annoying know-it-alls who stick their noses where they don’t belong, disrupting whatever social setting they find themselves in, while adding very little to the proceedings they have interrupted. Philologists, grammarians, glottologists, linguists, linguisticians, langualogists, linguaphiles, ling-geeks, word nerds, and tongue monkeys tend to doubly damn the irritating intrusion of pesky pedants: in addition to their bothersome butt-in-ery, when it comes to language, they are at best nitwittical know-it-somes who have a perturbing proclivity for being worryingly wrong.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis argued that the best way to combat harmful speech is with more speech. Clearly in many cases the most appropriate form of “more speech” is speech about the harmful speech—i.e., meta-speech. We claim the same is true here: the answer to poor pedantry is not to stifle it, but to attack it with a higher quality, a higher level of pedantry about the poor pedantry—i.e., meta-pedantry.
For example, prescriptivist pedants like to say that you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. While the value of that claim is open to debate, if you want to be meta-pedantic about it, it isn’t even correct in what it is trying to be pedantic about! What the pedantic prescriptivists mean is that you shouldn’t use a preposition at the end of a sentence. There’s nothing wrong with mentioning a preposition at the end of a sentence, as in, “My favorite preposition is amid,” or “Because you are a dork, you tend to overuse modulo,” or “Till should only be used when one is working the soil; otherwise, use ’til.” Such examples violate nothing—other than the pedant’s grasp of use-mention distinctions.
While pedantry does not require condescension, condescension is particularly highly correlated with poor pedantry (R = 0.74, p < 0.0002). Thus, counter meta-pedantry may also productively employ patronizing superciliousness and snide snark.
A few further examples:
Those who claim one should not split an infinitive do not understand what an infinitive is. Would they claim “You must stop making stupid claims” contains no infinitive, when it clearly does? Our friend to is a mere particle, doing its particulate thing, not bothering nobody. So, technically—a properly pedantic qualifier if ever there was one!—there’s nothing to split, if we’re splittin’ hairs.
Speaking of not bothering nobody, the most common alleged justification for avoiding double negatives is that they “cancel out,” like multiplying two negative numbers to get a positive number. And yet such prescriptively-minded complainers do not accept phrases like “He never did nothing to nobody”—where the triple negation would toggle the phrase back to a negative polarity. It’s okay—and more importantly, correct—to claim that multiple negation is not part of Standard English—and that using multiple negation has sociolinguistic consequences—without sullying mathematics in the process.
When only the literal meaning of literally is allowed or acknowledged by a pedant, not only does this etymological fallacy fly in the face of several centuries of usage by better writers than said pedant, it ignores the more general and fairly transparent pattern of words referring to truth, actuality, reality, etc. becoming markers of emphasis. What is the true meaning of truly? The real meaning of really? The vrai meaning of very? If you want to justifiably complain about a word changing its meaning, look up nice.
Nothing gets a pedant riled up quite like a minor moral panic, and one of the most minor of the least moral of panics concerns how the actor of a verb is elided by the passive voice. This is presented as a great ethical failing on the part of the writer, as if there were no other more insidious ways to protect the guilty than with a stylistic choice. Actors can be made explicit with prepositional phrases when needed, and in some contexts, they aren’t needed. Either admit that knowing when to use the passive voice is too hard, or re-aim your crusade toward I do not recall at this time.
Never let a pedant dismiss anything as merely a social construct—whether it be language, culture, or more contentious topics. While determining what is contingent and what is necessary is a valuable exercise, no one is raised in complete social isolation (pace Psammeticus) and things humans believe are true can carry significant weight in their lives and actions.
Axioms—whether mathematical, logical, or linguistical—have not been bestowed upon mere mortals by divine beings—not Prometheus, not Euclid, not Aristotle, not Grice—unchanging and eternal. We generally want them to be compatible and consistent—though that, too, is probably a choice, born of a desire to avoid insanity. The Parallel Postulate, the Axiom of Choice, the Law of Non-Contradiction, the Law of the Excluded Middle, the Maxim of Quality, the Maxim of Relation—all of these can be set aside by erudite mathematicians, clever philosophers, compulsive liars, and hyperactive toddlers. Surely even a garden-variety pedant can recognize the same meaning in fairly unique and more correct that large swathes of the non-pedantic language-using masses can.
If any of this sounds like your cup of tea, come join the The Meta-Pedantry Association and help us spread the word! We—Würm, Ghed, and Gogue—are part of the Division of Philology and Linguistics, but for those whose tastes lie elsewhere, we have numerous divisions: History and Politics, Science and Technology, Botany, Pharmacokinetics, Mathematics and Computer Science, the Mathematics of Humor, Basket Weaving, Archery, Glass Blowing, Roller Coaster Design, and Bowling—among numerous other, less obvious fields. The Division of Mathematics and Computer Science shares this example as an amuse-bouche for those who may find such intriguing:
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The Meta-Pedantry Association
Quibbler’s Corner / Building BΒВ
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Note: If the diacritics in our street address are not correct, your missive may not be delivered. Our Building designation at Quibbler’s Corner contains one Latin, one Greek, and one Cyrillic letter; if they are not correctly ordered your missive will be delayed. The Meta-Pedantry Association is not responsible—legally, morally, ethically, fiduciarily, grammatically, statutorily, culturally, or administratively—for lost communications.
