The Funnest Episode

Megan and Carrie talk with Dr Anne Curzan about her book Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words.

• Trump's brain

Transcript

Megan : Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast. The podcast about linguistic discrimination. 

Carrie: I'm Carrie Gillon.  

Megan : And I'm Megan Figueroa. Hey, Carrie. How's it going?  

Carrie : Well, you know, it's all right.

Megan: It's all right. Yes. It's spring here. It's totally spring here. It's, oh, it's daylight savings time. So we're on the same, hour the same day.

Carrie :  Again? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, it's like another winter here. Well, I think it's warmer again, but like this last week, it was winter again. It's, it was snowing on Wednesday. I was like, what is happening?,  

Carrie : Huh? So the groundhog was wrong. Actually, I don't know what the groundhog said this year. It said it  

Megan : Was gonna be a short winter, but, um, at least most of them did. But I don't know if we have one in bc. Oh, okay. And I just kind of feel like, obviously they're fake, but if, if we had one, it would, BC is just different. Especially Vancouver is different from the rest of Canada and like the East Coast. So  

Carrie :You would need a local groundhog to tell you  

Megan : Yes,  

Carrie : You can't  trust the East coast. ,  

Megan : No  

Carrie : Groundhog.  

Megan : I mean, enough, we're always, we always get spring weight earlier here, so.  

Carrie : So no, like, um, cherry blossoms yet?  

Megan :  No, 
 
Carrie : That's too bad. Those are so beautiful.

Megan : They are beautiful. But actually it's kind of good if it's a little bit later, like late March, early April is good,  

Carrie : So, yeah. I mean, we keep getting springs earlier and earlier here. It's not exactly good.
  
Megan : No, it's not. So speaking of things that are not good... 

Carrie : Oh, what a transition. Okay. I'm  

Megan : Ready. I'm ready.  

Carrie : I think I'm ready.  

Megan : I had not heard of this, and I can't believe that I hadn't heard of this, but according to NBC news,  

Carrie :  Okay,  

Megan : This is the headline. Trump warns of quote languages coming into our country, that quote, nobody has heard of,  

Carrie :  What?  

Megan :  You haven't heard this either. Hey,  

Carrie : No. I love the way this man's brains works. Like, I'm sorry, no one's ever heard this language. A what? B, even if that's true, how is that a thing to be scared of? How is that another thing to be like, oh, cool, I wanted to learn more.  

Megan : Yeah, I mean, that just speaks to they're so afraid of the other. Yeah, exactly.  

Carrie : I mean, I don't even think he's actually afraid. He just likes to stoke the fear, but....  

Megan : That's true. He likes to stoke the fear for others who are truly afraid.        I just, anthropomorphizing language like that is also very hilarious.  

Carrie :That's true. That's true. I hadn't even thought about that. 'cause I've automatically just think of the speakers. But you're right, he's like acting as though these languages are traveling by themselves, right?  

Megan: Like they have their little,  Their  little luggage, you know, it's fine just making their way across Mexico and to the US  

Carrie : I definitely have an image in my head that is comical, but I mean, truly this is not comical. I mean, this is terrible. He, and people are gonna, his, his fans are gonna, now they're worried about that, you know? 'cause he said it.  

Megan : Yeah, probably. You're gonna just believe. Believe it. Okay. So let me tell you the whole, well, this is probably not the whole quote because his quotes are always like, polished for the newspapers, right. And we sort are completely unfair, but okay. Quote, we have languages coming into our country. We don't have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language. There are, these are languages. It's the craziest thing. They have languages that nobody in this country has heard ever heard of. It's a very horrible thing.  

Carrie : Not one instructor for, just because he hasn't heard of these languages doesn't mean other people haven't heard of these languages, is what I'm hearing. 
 
Megan : A,B, who cares if there's an instructor to teach it or not,  

Carrie : Right?  

Megan :Irrelevant,  

Carrie : Right?, I mean, the thing that I think of is like, I'm sad because what if the thing about the interpretation and courts and stuff, and  there are not enough people to do that kind of stuff when it comes to, of course, underserved languages.  

Megan : Of course, there are legitimately languages where there's nobody who can do the translation for. Like, yeah. That's, that is, that's why often they're like forced to switch to like a major language like Spanish or like a variety of Arabic or whatever, like something else. But yeah, like that is a legitimate concern that, that we can't really address. Like if there's someone doesn't know it well enough to translate or interpret, interpret, then that just is Right.  But that, so that is bad. But, that's not what he means at all. It's  

Carrie : Not what doesn't mean he doesn't care about that part. No, that's not what he cares about.   

Megan :  Infact, he's happy. If they can't get services, that's fine for him.  

Carrie : That's part of his agenda actually. For them not to get services.  

Megan : He also called them truly foreign languages, which is interesting because .... 

Carrie : Interesting.  

Megan :Like, it really goes to show that the 
word foreign is obviously problematic in all sorts of different ways, but  he knows that Spanish is not actually like foreign  

Carrie : Foreign. Right.  

Megan : Any more than English is either both are or neither are.  

Carrie : Right. He might, he might even know that about indigenous languages. He might even know that  

Megan : He might, you know, I don't think he thinks about it at all,  

Carrie : But No, no. Nor would he say. No, but no. But yeah, the fact that he put that truly in front of foreign does go to show, goes to show that Yeah,  

Megan : He knows something knows. Here's, here's another, um, quote. So as he's addressing a rally in Virginia, Trump described New York classrooms as overwhelmed with quote pupils from foreign countries, from countries where they don't even know what the language is.  

Carrie : What, what? Okay. That, I don't, does he know what he means by that sometimes? Is what I have to  

Megan : Ask. I feel like what he thinks it, what he thinks he means is that I bet he's like, Somalian, what is even is that, you know what I mean?  

Carrie :  Yeah, yeah.  

Megan : Or South Sudan, who knows what language they speak there. You know what I mean? Right. And that's what I think he means. Like, he doesn't know what the language is. Therefore, nobody does.  

Carrie : Because he is the knower of all things.
  
Megan : The narcissism on this, man, I....  

Carrie : It's unprecedented. I know  

Megan : I know. It's impressive. I know we overuse that word, but for him, it's just, it applies. He's a narcissist through and through.  

Carrie : And I know we use, we overuse the word unprecedented, but I also think that, that it fits here.  

Megan : It really does. I don't know. I don't know. This is so funny to me. And also horrifying at the same time.  

Carrie :  Wow. Well, that's, I can't believe I didn't hear that before now.

Megan : No. I missed it entirely, but I don't know, man. I, whatever news I'm getting is just, I don't know. It's different. Like I'm finding out all of all of the airplane things, like who wants to fly now? Right. I never liked flying, and now I'm like, Hh-mm, I don't know, man. I don't know if I can get another flight., these planes have falling apart.  

Carrie : They really are falling apart. quality is going down capitalism.   

Megan : Okay. So there's something Capitalism. Yes.  Here's an, here's another part. So NBC news says, it's not entirely clear what languages Trump is referencing. When asked to clarify Trump's remarks, campaign spokesman Stephen Chung responded, quote, there are migrates invading from countries that we know. Nothing a point, nothing about which is the point. What  

Carrie : What, which is the point of what also we the idea that we don't know anything about the countries that they're coming from. Just,  It's impossible.      

Megan :No, I'm sorry. The US intelligence service knows everything. Or not everything. There's a lot about all countries around the world, 
 
Carrie : Right., even even a lay person or a civilian can find out a lot of information.  

Megan : A lot of things. You can find out a lot of things. I mean, like the information coming outta North Korea is patchy, but you can find out some stuff. Right, right. Like yeah,  

Carrie : Right. But the government definitely has access to more information  

Megan : Than we do. And they know a lot. A lot more than we do. And like, I'm sure they may be interpreting it with a certain lens or whatever, but that, but there's information, right.  

Carrie :Just the idea. I mean, they doubled down, his spokesperson doubled down, basically  

Megan : He kind of tried to like say, well, we don't really know much about these countries. That's what he really means. He's not talking about the languages. But no, dude, he was talking about the languages.  

Carrie : He was really talking about the languages.  

Megan : And maybe he meant the country, but I don't know., that doesn't make it better. It makes it sound like he's a little bit not all there now. Which is also possible.  

Carrie : That's definitely possible. It wouldn't be surprising. 
 
Megan : I know I shouldn't be laughing because this is actually horrific. What he's planning on doing if he takes over again, I know, is like turning it into a dictatorship. We, he's even said it like dictatorship for a day, but come on, he means forever. I know, but I can't help it because it's so ludicrous. Like sometimes like you have to laugh just to stop from crying. 
 
Carrie : No, I know. I mean, at least you're in Canada, although what we do here affects you. I know it does.

Megan : It affects the entire world.  

Carrie : Yeah.      

Megan : And Canada may be the most just because of how close we are. Like proximity wise, but also like, I'm pretty sure we're each other's greatest trading partner  

Carrie : And Mexico, just in Mexico, Canada, and the US Aren't they all kind of?  

Megan : Well, there's that agreement, right. But we get most, I think, a fair chunk of our goods from the us less from Mexico.  

Carrie : Okay. I see. No, I know. It weighs on me heavily. And I try, I think that it doesn't weigh on me, but I know it does. So,  

Megan : Oh, 100%. I mean, it's this cloud that's like, that's hovering over our heads, like, or sort of right? Like we're just, we lived under it for four years.  

Carrie : I know.  

Megan : And then there was like the lead up to it, which was over a year, right? Like kind of coming up down that escalator.  

Carrie : Yep.  

Megan : Everything from that point dark.
  
Carrie : Yep. Darkness.  

Megan : And then Biden comes in and like alleviates some of it, but not all of it.  

Carrie : Because all of his fans has gotten a taste of the Trump whatever he's selling and they like it  

Megan :And it's, yeah. It's  

Carrie : Still around.  

Megan : I mean, fascism doesn't just go away. I, people fascists are love fascism, so  

Carrie : And I hate things like truly foreign languages., 
 
Megan : Languages where there's not one single instructor. What a bizarre way of thinking about it. It really is. So as long as there's a single instructor that makes it okay. I don't  know his brain man. It's fascinating to me. Oh, that's  

Carrie : One way to think about it.  

Megan : That's the only way I have to intellectualize it. Otherwise, it's just truly too terrifying. Well,  

Carrie : At least we have a fun episode today.
  
Megan : The episode is great. I'm sorry for this, the darkness downer. The downer beforehand., we hope you enjoy. Yes.  

Carrie : So today we are so excited to have Anne Kan, who is the Geneva Smitherman Collegiate professor of English Linguistics and Education, and an Arthur f Thout professor at the University of Michigan, where she also currently serves as the dean of the College of Literature, science and the Arts. She has a new book called Says Who, a kinder funner usage guide for everyone who cares about words. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Anne.  

Ann : It is my pleasure. I really love the work that you both are doing. 

Carrie : Thank you. Oh, we appreciate that. And we appreciate the work that you're doing. You have a radio show too, right?  

Ann : I do have a short radio segment every Sunday morning on Michigan Public, which is the radio station here in Ann :Arbor in southeast Michigan and other places in Michigan where I share random linguistic information five minutes at a time.  

Carrie : It's amazing. That's a good amount of time to get people to get into linguistics.  

Ann : It's been great. And we've been doing it now for 12 years.  

Carrie : Wow.  

Ann : And I had a listener a couple years ago say to me, you know, I listen to you every Sunday morning and I realize that what you're really telling me is that I could chill out about language a little bit.  And I love that because I thought that's actually exactly what I'm saying without ever saying it. I'm talking about language change. I'm talking about variation in language. Where do these rules come from a little bit at a time. And I love that she over time was like, huh, I think you're telling me I could just relax.  

Carrie : Yeah, absolutely.  

Megan:  Yes. I think a lot of people get really stressed out about language, especially, you know, usage rules. Why did you want to write this book and why now? 
 
Ann : I love both parts of that question. Why this book and why now? This book is a passion project for me. I've been working on this and teaching this material most of my career, which is at this point, 25 years as a faculty member. I'm a linguist who lives in an English department. So I study the history of English. I study change over time, diversity in English and all its varieties across the country and the world. I'm also a professor in a department where we have the writing program and students are coming to learn how to master conventions of academic writing. So I've been balancing these hats, my linguist hat and my, at various times, director of the writing program hat. And I have wanted to write this book to help people think about how we could move away from straightforward ideas of right and wrong in language, which as linguists we know is not a particularly linguistically accurate or useful way to think about language.  

Ann : And instead, we could think about more and less effective ways to use language based on context and audience and purpose. Recognizing that we use language in a whole variety of ways, which may be more and less helpful depending on context. So it allows us to talk about repertoires. And the bigger your repertoire, the more effective a speaker and writer you can be. As to why now, I've been working on this book for about eight years. I became the dean during those eight years. And this has been this project that I love turning to in what I sometimes call magic time, the time that does not really exist, but that you find anyway, because it has brought me such joy to work on and I'm thrilled to have it done and coming out.  

Carrie : That makes me feel better about how long our book gets. Yes. Swimming. Yeah, COVID happened too, right? So that was kind of hard for everyone.. 
 
Ann : That's absolutely right. Covid happened six months into my deanship. Oh,  

Carrie : Oh, wow. Oh, you poor thing. Well, I love the title. You used the word funner in the title. A word that some people would actually argue isn't a word. Why did you want to do that?  

Ann : I did it as you guess. It's very intentional that funner is in the title, both to provoke perhaps a little bit of people's inner gr commando. And we can come back to the term gr commando. Yes. But also their curiosity about what is a usage guide that has funner in the title, what's going on here? And of course it goes with the first part of the title says Who Says Who, that Funner isn't a word, or that There's something wrong with that. And then there's a chapter in the book called the Funnest Chapter. That's where I talk about the history of fun as well as other issues around comparatives and superlatives. And what I really love about the example of fun is it shows how the rules can sometimes struggle to account for language change. So if you don't mind, while we're here, we could talk about the history of fun. Yes. Because it is so to speak fun. just  

Carrie :   Had to go there,. Sorry about that. That's okay..  

Ann : But fun for much of its life in English was a noun. And as a noun, if there was more fun, you said more fun in the same way that you would say more water. One can imagine then how if children heard a sentence such as the party was fun, they might think that in that sentence, fun is an adjective. Their parents might meant it as a noun in the same way that we could say the party was chaos, but the kid hears the party was fun. And they think, well that sounds like the party is boring, or the party is terrific. Fun is an adjective. At which point, the kid can also say The party was very fun. That was a fun party. Because now fun is an adjective. So if fun is an adjective, kids as they're learning language are figuring out the rules, these descriptive rules that are part of our knowledge.  

Ann : And they look at the way other one syllable adjectives work, which is that they typically take ER to form the comparative and EST to form the superlative. Tall, taller, tallest, short, shorter, shortest, wide, wide widest fun. Here we go,, funner, funnest. And that's of course why you hear kids create that construction until their parents or some other adult authority figure corrects them and says, no, no, no, it's not funner. That sounds terrible. It's more fun. At which point they categorize that as an exception to this rule. Because there are of course always exceptions. Now I think that in the long run, the kids are gonna win as they usually do. And what I'm seeing happen here is that when I poll undergraduates as well as older speakers, they don't mind funnest as much as they mind funner.  

Megan: Okay,  

Ann : Funnest. Some people have a negative reaction, but they say, it's not as bad. There was an iPod commercial years ago, the funnest iPod ever. It's out there in the language and people aren't having a strong reaction to it. So my guess is that funnest will become more and more standard and funner will scoot in on its coattails.  

Megan: I noticed that in myself actually just now, like you were talking about the chapters named the funnest chapter and it didn't bug me at all. But funner. Yeah, I do notice it.  

Ann :  Right. And I think that's such a great example of the way in which we also learn our peeves because of course there's nothing badly constructed about funner. It works just like taller. And when people say, I just don't like the sound of it, I often ask, well, how do you feel about the word runner? And they say, well, runner is fine, I say, but they rhyme. It's an acquired distaste  

Megan: For sure. Just like I think the acquired distaste for moist  

Ann : One of the most hated words in the English language.  

Megan : It's true. I know. I'm glad it doesn't bug me. 'cause it really seems to upset people. So let's go back to the gram manos and Wordies. You make that distinction. So what is the distinction and why is that important?  

Ann : Grabando, which is a word I really like. I wanna credit Lizzie Sker, New York Times Sunday Magazine. She has a little piece called, that should be a Word. And in 2012 she featured Grabando. And Amando is someone who corrects other people's grammar. And I saw this and I completely agreed that should be a word because it gives us a better term than grammar Nazi, which I have never liked. I think if we're gonna talk about Nazis, then we'll talk about Nazis, which is a very serious thing to talk about. And if we're gonna talk about people correcting each other's grammar, let's have a more playful term for that. And Rimando seems like a great one. And it also gives you the phrase to go rimando on someone, which I just think is a delightful phrase. So you have gr commandos, people who are correcting other people's grammars.  

Ann : And then wordy, which is a relatively new word, you can now find it in Merriam Webster online and other places. And it's typically defined as a lover of words, which I know the three of us are absolutely lovers of words. And I would actually make the argument humans love words. It's why your podcast is so terrific is that people are curious about language, languages they speak or other languages that they hear and are curious about. We also enjoy language. Think about how many people are playing wordle in the morning or spelling bee or enjoy punting. This is all pleasure in language. One of the breakthroughs for me in writing the book, and it's always fun when you get breakthroughs writing a book. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I haven't quite thought about this this way before, was to recognize that I think each one of us in our head has an inner wordy, that part of you that really enjoys language and an inner commando that hears things and feels unhappy about them.  

Ann : And even the three of us trained as linguists, very descriptive approach to language. Language change keeps me in business. I'm fascinated by it. And yet I will sometimes hear things that are new in the language. And my little inner gr Mando says, seriously, does the language have to change that way? I don't like that. Yep. Do you think that's because of institutions like school that we all have our inner gr Mando? That is certainly a big piece of it. For most of us, part of our education was learning a set of rules, what we would call prescriptive rules about language, about what is right and what is wrong, what is correct or incorrect or good and bad in the use of language. And it was presented to us in most cases as a very naturalized part of language. I did not have any exposure to more descriptive approaches until I went to college.  

Ann : There was no discussion of how do dialects work? How do do kids learn language. In elementary school, junior high school, high school, you're learning a little bit of physics, a little bit of chemistry. You're getting this descriptive approach to a lot of the sciences and social sciences. But when it comes to language, it's this very prescriptive, this is what's right and this is what is wrong. So it becomes very naturalized for us, I think, to see that there are right and wrong ways. I think another factor is just that we can sometimes have negative reactions to things that are new or unfamiliar in life in general.  

Carrie : Yeah, absolutely.  

Ann : I would guess both of you have examples. It cracks me up when I hear my inner grabando get all upset about things. A recent example was double click as a verb to mean to dive deeper into something. Oh, 
 
Megan : I would not use it that way.  

Ann  It's pretty business jargony. I think I gave a talk the other day in a business setting, and I gave this example and they said, oh, we all use double click that way. I encountered it with a colleague of mine in the business school, and it was the way that he transitioned between slides. So you'd have a slide with three different bullet points, and then he would say, okay, let's double click on the first idea. And that would be the transition to the next slide. And I would sit in these presentations and feel cranky about this bit of business jargon and think this is just ridiculous. And so business school. And I came home one night and I was telling my partner about this use of double click and how jargony it was. And he looked at me and he said, I actually think it's quite clever.  

Carrie : Yeah.  
  
Ann :  And I thought, of course it is. It actually is poetic. It's kind of a great metaphorical use of it. And I have subsequently calmed down my inner commando about it. And I think that that's what in the book I'm trying to do is help each of us have these conversations with our inner commando. Before that correction comes outta your mouth to sort of say, wait a minute, why am I feeling so cranky? Am I justified in this? Do I need to say this out loud at this moment? Is that a good thing to do? Or could I think more like a wordy? And one of the analogies that I came up with in writing the book was we could think of your inner wordy, like a bird watcher. And if a bird watcher's out there looking for new birds and then you see a new bird, you should be curious about the new bird and try to describe the new bird as opposed to kill the new bird. Right. But with language, we often hear a new thing and our reaction can be, we gotta make that stop  

Megan: Kill it with fire.  

Ann : Yeah.    

Megan: A lot of the business jargon usually gets under my cr. But this one, even though at first I was like, what? It is clever. I actually like it now.  

Carrie : I do too. I wonder if it's gonna expand to different areas.  

Ann : Oh, I would guess it will because the idea of digging deeper into something is something that crosses lots of context. And one of the things that I really love about being a historian of the English language, which gets to this business jargon question, is that I study both how language changes over time or how the English language has changed over time and how attitudes about what is right and wrong change over time. And what I love about that is it helps give us perspective on the things that we're feeling cranky about now. Because we can go back in time and see what people were feeling cranky about 50, a hundred, 200 years ago. And they look quaint and silly. And I often say we're gonna look just as quaint and silly 50 or a hundred years from now. And an example in the business jargon space is finalize these IZE verbs when they come in, often create a lot of anxiety and angst and anger. 
 
Ann : Finalize. In the 1960s, people latched onto that as business jargon. They really didn't like it. The American Heritage Usage Panel pretty soundly condemned it in the late 1960s. We can come back to that usage panel. But as the panel kept getting surveyed over the decades, you watched more and more of the panel except finalized. And at this point, almost the whole panel says there's absolutely nothing wrong. I finalize. 'cause it doesn't even sound jargony to us anymore. And I not at all sometimes show students that usage note. And I say that is the sound of a peeve dying. 
 
Megan: Oh, I love it.,  

Carrie : This totally gets to our next question. You're already hitting on it. As a historian of the English language. What insights do you in particular bring to the task of writing a usage guide?  

Ann : Yeah, so I think there are a couple of main points that I'm trying to help people see as part of thinking about usage. One is the English language is always changing, like every living language. And that looks much cooler to us in retrospect than it does now. When we look at changes in the past, such as the word nice, used to mean silly or lolly gag used to mean to mess around in the kissing sense of mess around.  

Carrie : Oh, I didn't know that.
  
Ann : I know we think that's so interesting. Or the fact that double and multiple negation was standard in all varieties of English. People say that is just really interesting. And then you say, look, by accident is giving way to on accident. If you listen to how young people speak and people say, that is terrible, that is the destruction of the English language. And I say, it's actually not. It's language change. It's part of a living language. That is one of the first key points that I bring as a historian of the language. A second one is, as we've been talking about, that notions of right and wrong are not nearly as straightforward as we were taught in school. And that is both because we can look over time to see that what was considered wrong or right, 50, a hundred, 200 years ago has now changed.  

Ann :  And what was right is now wrong or wrong is now right or no one notices anymore. That is a key part of that. But also even just in the present, and this is where I put on my English professor hat, people don't agree about what is right or wrong or what is a quote unquote mistake because people have learned different rules or people care deeply about different rules. So you'll have one English professor who feels that it is wrong to use, hopefully to mean it is hoped. And you'll have another English professor who didn't learn about that or doesn't care. And students are trying to navigate this obstacle course among faculty where they're like, what are people gonna care about? And what is right and what is wrong? So one of the things I'm trying to help people think about in the book is that we could allow more variation in the language than many usage guides tend to allow.  

Carrie :   Who do you hope whose hands this book will get into? Most of all?  

Ann : It's such a good question because I am hoping that this usage guide will reach both emerging writers, students, people who are trying to hone those skills as speakers and as writers. I'm also hoping that the gatekeepers are gonna read this book. And often we place the burden on writers, right? Or speakers. And we say, you just have to learn to navigate this obstacle course and figure out what people's peeves are and work your way through it and avoid the peeves. And to some extent that is true. It's part of being a savvy writer is thinking about what are the expectations of this audience? How do I wanna navigate that? But I want the gatekeepers to be much more accepting of change and variation because this is where discrimination comes in. And it's why I'm so thrilled to be on your podcast where you all focus on this in all of your episodes because language is such a powerful gatekeeper. And the gatekeepers are often not well informed about where a rule came from, whether it was well founded to be begin with, what's happening in the language, what are writers and readers and speakers doing in this space? And that's what I hope this book will help address. Well, 
 
Carrie : It absolutely does. With your historical perspective on where these rules are coming from. It's very, very helpful.  

Megan: I wanna go back to the on accident by accident thing. I actually don't think it's just young people because Megan's generation definitely has on  

Carrie : Accident. I know I say on accident, I feel  

Megan:  Like my generation, gen X is the last of the by accidents. So we're talking people in their forties now are on accident users.  

Ann : Yes. And of course, from my perspective, those are all younger.  

Carrie : Still young people. Younger  

Megan :But not young.  

Ann :  And what I like about this example too is that many older speakers notice it. When I poll undergraduates, I will get a mixture of by accident and on accident speakers, including young people who use both forms. And usually more than half of them have never noticed it until I brought it up that it's variation living below the level of consciousness. And it's not until I say something that they think, oh yeah, I could use both.  

Megan:  'cause it's definitely, I notice it,  

Carrie : You notice when I say on accident,  

Megan : You or anybody, I've noticed it on TV a lot more recently. It's I think, become the norm now at this point. I'm the old fuddy duddy, 
 
Ann :And it's again, such a good example of noticing it. And I also notice it. I'm a by accident speaker and I notice on accident speakers, who knows, in another 10, 15 years I may not even notice anymore. But right now, Carrie, I would guess you and I don't say anything about it.  

Megan No, God, no.  

Ann : Well, right. But this was first brought to my attention by parents 10, 15 years ago who came to me to say, what is happening with this on accident thing? And make it stop  

Carrie : Make it stop because you have that power..  

Megan Okay, sure.. 
 
Carrie :  I'll get right on that..  

Ann :  They were also doing that with the new verb verse to mean To play against. Oh,  

Carrie : Is that relatively new?  

Ann : It's relatively new from everything I can tell. And it is a wonderful example of back formation. These parents would come to me all angry about it. And then I was very disappointing because I said, that is so cool. That's such a creative back formation by young people. Right? Where I think they've taken versus the Latin preposition and reinterpreted versus as verses. If you hear something like tonight, the thunder versus the heat.  

Carrie : It  ...

Ann : Sounds a lot like the thunder plays the heat, in which case verse is a verb that means play against, at which point you can be versing people and have versed them.  

Megan: I had heard that verb, but it's not part of my normal life at all. Like I haven't heard it in years. I hope it's surviving. 'cause it's really cool. 
 
Carrie : I Think it is. 
 
Ann : I agree. It seems to be thriving. I think it's here to stay. One could say it's a nice concise shortcut for play against. You can just say verse,  

Carrie : I have it. I don't have the versing. Like you can reversing people. Do people use that? Have you heard huh? Very cool. Because  

Ann : Once it's a verb, it can have the present part simple, the passport simple. It's out there for young people who have it as a verb. There it is. Awesome.
  
Megan :This actually dovetails really nicely with our next question, which is why do people have such strong feelings about what is or is not allowed to be counted as a word? And when someone says a word isn't real, what are they really saying? 
 
Ann : I have been fascinated by this question for years when people say, is that a word or That's not a real word. And I was just looking at it with a new peeve that crossed my radar in the last couple of weeks, which is training as a a accountable noun. Oh, okay. In other words, training to mean a training session at which point it can be made plural, and you can have three trainings this month. Someone asked me about it as to is it okay? And I went online looking at the guidance about it, and I found this site that said, training as accountable is not a word. Now of course it is a word because we all know what it means, and a word is a word. If it conveys meaning to other people, it has conventional accepted use. And if I said my company's offering three trainings this month about that, we would all just nod and on, we would go.
  
Ann :  So of course it's a word. I think what people mean is either it is not, or I don't think it is in a standard dictionary. Now of course, dictionary editors would say, we're just trying to keep up with all of you and we can never keep up as you all change the language. So you're changing the language. We're trying to record that. But dictionary editors are also trying to make sure that they don't record something that turns out to be only a short-lived fad in the language and dies. They're waiting to see what the shelf life of this new use is, so they'll never be fully on top of the most current changes. The landscape has also, of course changed with online dictionaries, which can be updated faster. The print dictionaries really 
couldn't keep up with us, right? Because it took a while to update them. 
 
Ann : But what's interesting to me also about a word like training is that I went into the Oxford English dictionary to look at what's the history of that? And you can find the accountable use of training back into the 15 hundreds. It started in the military, then it spreads from there. It has been long standing. But if you look at the Google books and Gram viewer, one of my favorite toys, so fun. So fun has some weaknesses to it, but very fun for overall trends. If you search for trainings as a plural, you see that over the last 20 to 25 years it has shot up in usage. In other words, it is fashionable. And that's why people are now noticing it. Even though it's been in use for hundreds of years, it suddenly is everywhere. And people are saying, wait a minute, can you really do that?  

Ann : I think the other thing that's worth noticing is that I've tried, I still screw it up sometimes, but I've tried to say, I don't think people think it's not in a standard dictionary. What we often say is people don't think it's in the dictionary. Right. And I will catch myself using that phrase, but there's no such thing as the dictionary, as the three of us know, there are many dictionaries with different philosophies. They were published at different dates. Some of them are more general dictionaries, some are under bridge, some are collegiate, some are specialized. So there's also some material in the book trying to unpack how do dictionaries work? Because dictionaries are actually fascinating resources. Once you unpack the history of them, them and the human hands involved in creating them,  

Carrie: That's an important point that there are human hands that are in creating them. And do you think that that plays into what people were really saying when they say a word isn't real? Is it getting to the fact that there are still human gatekeepers in these things and they are trying to keep up with us, but if we don't find it in the dictionary at a certain point when someone looks at it, then we're kind of like see, told you?  

Ann: I think we have been educated to trust that there are language authorities out there who are empowered to tell us what is right and what is wrong, what is and what isn't a word that is what's behind my title of the book, which is says who? That we should be asking questions. When someone says that's just not right or that's not a word, that it's okay to say who said that? Where does that rule come from? It doesn't mean that it's not a useful rule, but we should ask, is it a useful rule? Where does it come from? Does it actually make me a more effective writer, or does it hinder my ability to be an effective speaker or writer? And with dictionaries, I love pulling back that curtain and saying, do you think the dictionary editors were right on this one? And dictionary editors are comfortable with that.  

Ann : They know that they are doing the best that they can to capture what a word means in a very concise way, knowing that words will surpass our ability to explain their meaning in a short definition, and that they also will change. And so we are allowed to challenge those definitions. One of the exercises that I do in class with students is look at words that might have usage labels like slang or offensive or informal, colloquial, vulgar slang. And I take out all the usage labels, leave the definitions, and I ask them to decide what usage label they would put on a word. Is it informal or slang? Is it offensive? Is it vulgar? And they work through it and they say, these decisions are really hard. And then I will share what the editors of a dictionary have done, the one that I've taken the examples from.  
Ann :  00:40:48    And they often disagree and they will say, wait a minute, what do you mean they have no usage label there? That word is offensive and it should have a usage label. And I say, the editors had to make very human decisions and they may not have captured the way you think about this word or the way that this word has changed over time. And what I like is that students come out of that thinking about dictionaries in very different ways. Not that they aren't incredibly valuable resources because they are good dictionaries are phenomenal and erudite and an incredible resource for all of us. But they're human. 
 
Carrie : I think people really forget that they're human ultimately.  

Ann :  And that's what we see in the phrase the dictionary. Or when I started working on this years ago, I realized, wow, when you walk into, for example, a university library, one of the first things you often see is a big unabridged dictionary on a pedestal framed as this place where you go to get answers. And rarely can you see unless you really flip all the way to the front to see, you know, what dictionary is this? When was it published? It's just there as this old longstanding authority on language. But of course, if it's at least 10, 15, 20 years old, it's probably already out of date with words that are on the move. 
 
Megan :100%. So you cover a lot of different kinds of rules in your book. Do you wanna talk about your favorite one that either you enjoy using or that you like breaking?  

Ann : Well, the rule that I probably feel most strongly about is about singular. They, I have very strong feelings about Oxford commas too. And we can come back to that. But singular, they, I have been working on singular day since I was an undergraduate actually. And we have seen so much change on this within our lifetimes change that really is so exciting to me. I wasn't sure I'd see it in my lifetime. I grew up, I'm old enough that in junior high school and through a lot of high school, I was taught to use generic. He okay, that it should be, a teacher should learn his students' names because he encompassed all of us. And I will say as someone who does not identify as, he did not really feel like it encompassed me. But that's what I was taught was correct. And it wasn't until much later that I looked into the history of this rule.  

Ann : And it was really powerful for me to learn where this came from. And also to understand the disjunct between the way we speak and what we've been taught to write down. If you look at the way we speak, almost all of us, including people who say that they do not like and do not use singular, they almost all of us actually do use singular. They, you hear it in a sentence such as someone who knows where they're going, should give us directions. Someone who knows where they're going. It's so invisible, right? It goes right by us. But someone is singular. There's that singular. They, for a person whose gender is unknown, irrelevant not to be disclosed, that use goes back to at least the 13 hundreds singular. They the rule that we're supposed to use. He rather than they goes back to the 18th century.  

Ann : We can find this idea that the masculine encompasses the feminine in those grammar books. And then it's Linley Murray's grammar 1795 that is incredibly influential in spreading this rule. And what's interesting to me is in that grammar book, he has a sentence with a singular they in it, and he crosses out the they and puts a he. So he knew what we wanted to say and write, and he crossed it out. He said, that's a he. And for 200 years we lived with this rule that it was, was he as a generic 1970s, you get second wave feminism pushing against this singular generic. He very successfully, at which point we got the advice that you should use. He or she, Ugh.. 
 
Carrie : Isn't that your generation's, Carrie? Did you learn that growing up? He or she?   

Ann :  Which is okay as far as it gets you. It's clunky. It's also not inclusive. Not everyone identifies within the he she binary. You got advice like you could alternate he and she between paragraphs, which to me is even worse. Very confusing. Or you could rewrite the whole thing so you don't need a pronoun or you make the whole thing plural. And the question is, why can't we write down singular they? And that's been a shift in thinking for me. I used to get into debates with people about whether they could be singular. And I realized that this was not a good debate because it's actually not debatable. Someone would say to me, but they can't be singular. And I would say, but it is. And they would say, but it can't be. And I would say, but it is, if you look at the data, it is singular when someone says, but a pronoun can't be singular and plural at the same time.  

Ann :  Exactly.. I think what an interesting argument to make about English where you already have another pronoun, you mm-Hmm  that functions as a singular and plural at the same time with that plural verb R in both the singular and the plural. They's been doing this for hundreds of years. So the question is, why can't we write it down? And there is no good reason why we can't write singular they down. What I couldn't have predicted is that it would be singular non-binary. They that would finally open the gates on this one. When the Washington Post changed its guidelines, and I think it was 2015, it was to allow for the use of singular non-binary. They, for people who don't identify as he or she as a signal of respect, a really important one to use people's pronouns. And then the generic use of singular, they is gonna get to scoot in behind the non-binary use of they, which is every way that we can use singular they in writing is good by me.  

Ann : I'm really thrilled to see this change happen. And I think the one fair argument that people make is that they as a singular can be ambiguous sometimes. And an example would be, I saw my mother and her friend and they said, so is that both of them said, or either the friend or your mother identifies as they, and they said, that's ambiguous. But we could take the same sentence and say, I saw my mother and her friend and she said, and that would also be ambiguous because we don't know if it was your mother or her friend. Pronouns can be ambiguous and if you're writing, you need to fix it. So it's not ambiguous, but it's not inherent in they that they as ambiguous and no other pronoun is ambiguous. It's to say pronouns can sometimes be ambiguous. And as an effective writer, you should clarify any potential ambiguity no matter what pronoun it is.  

Carrie : Absolutely.  

Megan: Languages have whole strategies around topic tracking. 'cause.  

Carrie : Yep.    .  

Megan Because yeah, you're not sure who the pronoun is referring to.  

Ann :  Right? But if you don't like singular, they, you'll use that as an argument to say, we shouldn't write down singular. They, the other argument you'll hear with non-binary, singular, they, because this one is relatively new, and if it is new to you, it can be hard to incorporate into your grammar when you're referring to a specific person whose pronoun is they, people will say, I really struggle with that. And I say, well, okay, work on it. You will get used to it. Younger people in environments where they have a lot of peers who may use singular, they as their pronoun look at us older speakers and say, why do you all find this so hard? It's really not that hard. But sometimes people will say to me, I think it's silly that someone has they as a pronoun. And that is a place where we're seeing discrimination in the language. 
 
Ann : And I wanna catch it to say it's not silly that is that person's pronoun. And the analogy that I came up with a few years ago that seems to help a little bit is with names. And I said, if someone said to you, my name is Michael, but I go by Paul and you said, well, I'm gonna call you Michael because that is easier for me, or I'm gonna call you Andy because that is easier for me. We would think that that was rude and odd as a response to someone saying, this is my name. And when someone says, this is my pronoun, you should call someone by their pronoun and not say, I'm sorry, it's easier for me to use some other pronoun. Right? It's respectful to use people's pronouns the same way it's respectful to use the names that they use.  

Carrie : And it's so simple. It's ultimately simple, basic human decency.  

Megan I do think the singular they, the non-binary one can be a little bit tricky for people. I don't wanna be like, oh, it's so simple. The name is really simple. I think there's like the grammatical thing that just, it's a little bit tricky at first, but it's not insurmountable. You can do it.  

Carrie : Well, the idea of it's simple. The idea that you would want to do this for someone is simple. I believe it couldn't complicate it to, you know, use it. But simple idea to want to respect someone.  

Ann : I think that's a beautiful distinction right there of it's simple to want to respect people and to realize that using their pronouns is a way to respect them. And then for those of us who didn't grow up with singular, they as a non-binary pronoun, it may take us some time to integrate it into our grammar. And we may get it wrong sometimes. And then you apologize and you try to get it right. And that's what's been so interesting to me with my nieces and nephews who are young people and they've been in schools where non-binary, they is a thing. They have peers who are using it. It's just part of their grammar. They don't even think about it. And they sometimes say to me, Anne, what is all the fuss about? I'm like, oh, there's a fuss.  

Megan  What's all the fuss about is you have perfect encapsulation of all of these. It is true., you brought up the Oxford comma. What are your thoughts on that?  

Ann : I once had a student come up after class, I was teaching the history of English, and she said, professor Curzan, do you have feelings about the Oxford comma? And I realized, I really do have feelings about the Oxford comma. I like it. Do you both like it? Not like it. I 

Megan: Like it. I'm indifferent., sometimes I think it's necessary, but I don't think it's always necessary.  

Ann : And that would be exactly right. There are times when it usefully disambiguate that if it's not there, you can get some ambiguity. And one of the points I try to make a few different times in the book is that one of the things that makes writing so hard, makes it harder than speaking is that it cannot tolerate as much ambiguity as speech that we're ambiguous all the time in speech, because we have shared context a lot of the time. We also can see, or someone will ask if they're confused and we can clarify. And in writing, you can't do that. And many of the rules that are out there, not all of them, but at least some of them are designed to minimize ambiguity. And that can actually be helpful. And the Oxford comma can be helpful when it does that. I realize that I, in my appreciation of the Oxford comma, have fallen into the idea that either you always use the Oxford comma or you always don't use the Oxford comma, which is what most style guides will tell you.  

Ann : And different style guides will use it or not use it. Journalism tends not to use the Oxford comma because it's sparser on punctuation. But I have been pushing myself, I don't actually believe my own argument on this, but I'm trying to challenge my own thinking, which is you could use the Oxford comma when it is helpful and not use it when it is unnecessary. And it would be fine because we don't need as much consistency as style guides tell us that we need, I've been a copy editor for years and I still at some level enforce that. But at the linguist part of me is trying to push on and do you have to be quite such a stickler about the consistency?  

Megan  I only enforce it if someone's using a PA style or whatever styles require it. Otherwise, yeah, I just let whatever the authors do.  

Ann : But I do it, for example, with data where when I copy edit, I believe data can be both singular and plural because it can, if you look at usage, it is both singular and plural. But I came up with this rule for myself, which is that the author has to be consistent in the article. Either it's always singular in the article or it's always plural in the article. But again, just as a thought exercise, would it be that confusing to us if it was both singular and plural in the same article? Probably not. But at the same time, one could say, why risk distracting your readers by having the inconsistency  

Megan:  With that one? For sure. I would find that jarring. I think I'd be like, well, which one is it? Are you making a distinction? Like should I think of a singular data as something different from the plural data? I don't know.  

Ann : This is where I hope that we can get to as editors and writers is not that plural. Data is correct and singular data is wrong because that's not true. Data is becoming singular over time. But if it's shifting between singular and plural, will that be distracting to your readers? Is it gonna raise questions like Carrie :has of, wait, is there some distinction here that I'm missing? And then suddenly they're focused on the grammar as opposed to the content. So it could be worth editing to make sure people aren't distracted by it. That's different from saying this is right and this is wrong. Yes,  

Carrie : Absolutely. I agree.  

Megan:  And I think I'm gonna use that in my head. 'cause I do some editing for linguistic journals  

Ann : And you see both. Mm-Hmm, 
 
Megan:  And I don't mess with that, but if it wasn't consistent, I probably would choose one or the other. But yeah, for other kinds of similar questions, I'm gonna ask that to myself. Like, does it matter??  

Carrie : I like that. Does it matter? What's the fuss about fuss about?  

Ann : I'll just pop in that I think one of the other really important messages of the book, which resonates so much with your podcast is that linguistic diversity is part of cultural diversity.  Absolutely. And so along with language change, really trying to help people understand that we all have different ways of speaking as part of the diversity of us. And that as we seek to create fully inclusive climates in workplaces, in our homes, everywhere else in the education system, embracing linguistic diversity as part of our diversity is a piece of that. And that's where we need to be curious about how do grammars differ from group to group within English in the United States and around the world. And it doesn't mean that you can't, as a teacher, and I am a teacher, you can't signal to students. Some people will notice this as not the standardized form, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. You're helping students make informed choices as they navigate the space. And that's what I hope that this book can also help people do.  

Carrie : I think that's a perfect place to end on actually.  

Megan: Thank you so much. This was a great conversation.  

Carrie : It was so lovely to talk to you.  

Ann : So much fun. Thank you for the invitation. 
 
Megan:  I'm glad you could make it. And we always leave our listeners to the one final message,  

All : Don't be an asshole. Don't an asshole..  

Carrie:  The Vocal Fries podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon. Theme music by Nick Gran. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Vocal fries pod. You can email us at vocal fries pod@gmail.com and our website is vocal fries pod.com. 

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