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Originally Posted by Lazarus Short /img/forum/go_quote.gif
My apologies - my comments were directed in a couple of directions. I hope you don't mind that I trimmed your quote, but I wanted to bring some things into focus. Like, why do you find my "construct system on manners and language" to be bizarre? I consider good grammar part of manners, though I will admit it is possible to have one without the other. In general however, I find that bad manners and bad grammar/language go together. I also feel embarassed when people who are not native English speakers post here, and their English is better than that of some who appear to be fellow Americans. We have drifted far from the King's English, and even Noah Webster, if he could hear modern American English, might wonder what went wrong. I am well familiar with the English of the past, in its full bloom of development, but our once-great language is in a state of degeneration. Is that a construct system?
Oh, wait: "Churros ain't got shiz on da pretz, yo." That makes me think about a short video on the subject of "That's your brain on American English."
Laz
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After some good discussion I saw the merit in en480c4's original post, or at least I saw the connection he was making (see below). However, as usual, correlation does not imply not causation; simply because good grammar and traditional manners happen to be on the decline at the same time does not mean they are connected at the hip. I can see the wit in en480c4's statement, but I think with a little investigation it becomes clear that it just wasn't witty enough.
Poor grammar in spoken and written English is something easily measurable, so the notion that it is on the decline, while still a part of your construct system, is probably something most people familiar with well constructed English could agree with. In contrast, as this thread has shown us, manners come down to perception. One person might believe in the almighty "you're welcome" while others prefer to avoid the phrase altogether. In my opinion, the people who subscribe to the "no problem" philosophy have explained their positions much more clearly than the people who automatically assume that manners are on the decline because they don't hear a "you're welcome" in all situations.
What I find bizarre is that you consider good grammar (something relatively quantifiable) a part of good manners (something up to individual perception). If you want to be an advocate for good grammar, I would suggest you keep it as far away from manners as possible. As Western liberalism spreads across the globe human beings will probably continue to place more and more value in the individual, turning widely agreed upon, traditional manners into something of a sinking ship. I say rescue grammar while you can.
While I do not agree that grammar and manners are intrinsically connected, I do see that they probably stem from the same general issue--that is, the individual-over-society mentality that seems to be compounded by the "everyone is entitled to their own opinion" fallacy that it spawned. A part of this is just the natural order: diversity and pursuit of self tends to be encouraged on all fronts in the Western world and is rapidly spreading through the East, so naturally people are going to begin thinking diversely. Bad or good, this is where we are. The other several million tons of the iceberg is a topic far larger than Head-Fi would like to contain, because it's impossible to address without a frank discussion on the history of politics and religion. Suffice it to say, the entire history of humanity has brought us here.
One thing I will mention is that common verbal language prior to the advent of sound recording methods is more or less an unknown. You may be able to analyze formal written correspondence from the 18th century but you probably have no idea how people spoke in everyday life. Since many forms of written Internet communication blur the lines between the written and the spoken, comparing written English on an Internet forum to that of written correspondence of the past and hoping to draw meaningful conclusions from it is probably not valid.
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Originally Posted by en480c4 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Somebody made a statement about things not being done the "right" way anymore. I thought it was funny that it was done in a way that illustrates how things are not being done "right" with the English language anymore, especially online. The result was my wise-ass and sarcastic response.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Superpredator /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Ah, I like the cut of your angle's jib.
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