Prescriptivism for the masses...

[rivka]

"Can you provide proof that something was once part of English usage, which doesn't come from (*sneer*) the popular literature of the time?"

*banging head on keyboard*

Comments

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I was wondering how I had gotten myself into dot_cattiness...

Yikes.

The only hope for the assignment is if there is a distinction (a horrible on, IMHO) between "popular" and "high brow" literature. So Chaucer and Shakespeare count as high brow, and not popular.

Blergh.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Things become part of English usage by being widely used in English, for God's sake. How complicated can that possibly be?

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

Yes. True. I was thinking the teacher was trying to draw distinctions about different paths -- word introduced orally, words introduced through formal speeches, words introduce through foreign cultures, words introduced through literature.

The problem is that if you go back far enough, we really only have the literature to check to see if the people used the words, so it's self-defeating.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, this isn't a teacher - just someone who wants to sneer at the "PCism" of gender-neutral pronouns, and has a hard time with being proven wrong.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

Ah. Light is shed. I'm too tired to code, and too tired for LJ, apparently! ;-)

It would be an interesting assignment. Find words in English that entered through non-literary means.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you could come up with loads of street slang, but I rather doubt that someone sneering at "popular literature" would find them an appropriate reference.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

... Except, of course, that in their day, Shakespeare and Chaucer were the popular literature (at least for those who could read.)

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I know -- which is why the distinction between "popular" literature and "real" literature is a dumb one. But if someone believed in and delineated the two, then asking for references not in "popular" literature might make sense.

But don't worry -- I was missing the boat in general on this thread.