5 ms·

tl;dr An article espousing the merits of postmodernism and the obsolescence of so-called "Standard White English" (formal English), while also being written lar

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.

skylan_q 13y ago
DFW was mentioned and then I skipped the rest of the article to the comments. A commenter said "You had me at DFW". I felt the opposite.
Kluny 13y ago
I don't have downvote privileges. But I found this comment to be condescending without adding anything to the discussion but sarcasm.
- na85 13y ago
  How interesting. I do have downvote privileges and found your comment to add literally nothing at all to the conversation.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Likewise and likewise. I never downvote for content; I do, on the other hand, quite freely downvote in cases, such as this, where there is no content of which to form an opinion.
sp332 13y ago
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.
- aaronem 13y ago
  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.)
  - sp332 13y ago
    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. While it may have avoided some bugs, the coding style didn't allow for much self-expression. When you're writing code for a smaller audience, or just one-off code for your own use, standards are much looser. If you're writing a one-liner in Perl, maybe there aren't any standards! And that's the point of the article. It doesn't make sense to apply strict rules about what you can say and how you say it when you're just updating your facebook status or making a blog post. I mean you could if you wanted to, just like "you can write FORTRAN in any language." Yes, I would have read your post all the way through, and that judgmental attitude you reference is just what the author is arguing we should get rid of.
rezendi 13y ago
I note with great amusement your use of "tl;dr".
philosophus 13y ago
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.

skylan_q 13y ago

DFW was mentioned and then I skipped the rest of the article to the comments. A commenter said "You had me at DFW". I felt the opposite.

Kluny 13y ago

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

na85 13y ago
How interesting. I do have downvote privileges and found your comment to add literally nothing at all to the conversation.
- aaronem 13y ago
  Likewise and likewise. I never downvote for content; I do, on the other hand, quite freely downvote in cases, such as this, where there is no content of which to form an opinion.

sp332 13y ago

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.

aaronem 13y ago
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.)
- sp332 13y ago
  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. While it may have avoided some bugs, the coding style didn't allow for much self-expression. When you're writing code for a smaller audience, or just one-off code for your own use, standards are much looser. If you're writing a one-liner in Perl, maybe there aren't any standards! And that's the point of the article. It doesn't make sense to apply strict rules about what you can say and how you say it when you're just updating your facebook status or making a blog post. I mean you could if you wanted to, just like "you can write FORTRAN in any language." Yes, I would have read your post all the way through, and that judgmental attitude you reference is just what the author is arguing we should get rid of.

rezendi 13y ago

I note with great amusement your use of "tl;dr".

philosophus 13y ago

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.