I’m not really sure what to make of this. It’s a video, made by an autistic woman, telling her take on language, the world, and the views of others. It’s around eight minutes, but I think it’s also worth it:

Here’s a link to the video on YouTube

As I said, I’m not really sure what to make of this. It’s a really beautiful video, and is exceptionally well made, far above the normal YouTube fodder. It also has a very interesting take on language, what constitutes language, and the sociolinguistics of Autism. If this is, in fact, a genuine look into the autistic mind, I’m very impressed, and I’ll definitely be thinking about language in a whole new way.

However, my internet cynicism is a bit too harsh for me to take this completely at face value. It doesn’t have any of the features of an “amateur video”, and as I said, it’s really a cut above 90% of what’s on YouTube. If this were to come out as something done by a few art students for notoriety, I’d be disappointed, but not shocked.

If this is everything it says it is, I have to thank the creator. It’s both brave and powerful, and exceptionally well done. It’s always good to have your worldview tweaked a little bit, and this video definitely did that for me. I hope it affected you as well.

(Also, as a note, you’ll notice that I’m not embedding the YouTube video in the page as many site do. I’m sorry for the (slight) inconvenience, but I think it’s the best choice for accessibility, compatibility, and the aesthetics of this site)

Lots of times, when I say I’m a linguist (at least, a linguist-to-be), people tend to think that’s synonymous with “Grammarian”. Next thing you know, people are trying to drop in “whom” and all sorts of obscure, eighth-grade-english-teacher grammar points. Although the attempts are flattering, it’s really not what we do.

I’ve touched on the difference between descriptivism and prescriptivism a few times before (here, here and here), but I think it’s time for a formal discussion of the differences.

So, two professors walk into a bar. One, from the English department at the local university, is a steadfast prescriptivist. The other, is a descriptivist from the local Linguistics department. As they’re sitting there, the people in the booth behind them begin talking.

Patron One: “Hey, ain’t that the prettiest little thang over there back behind the bar? I wonder where she came from!”
Patron Two: “Wait, who’s you talkin’ about? Oooh, I see. She’s purty.”
Patron One: “Aww, damnit. She just left with Wallace.”

The prescriptivist would hear that and think that their speech is “incorrect”. “Ain’t” ain’t a word, you can’t end a sentence with a preposition, and the second man should have said “Wait, about whom are you talking?”. To him, their language would sound grating, uneducated, and just “wrong”.

The descriptivist, on the other hand, would hear the conversation differently. He’d realize (if nothing else from the look of raw fury on his companion’s face) that the language used was outside of traditional grammatical rules. However, he wouldn’t say it’s “wrong”. Obviously, both men accomplished something through their communication, and there was a mutual understanding of what was said. The wording wasn’t painfully ambiguous, and overall, the utterance (linguist-speak for a bit of language) functioned just fine. Also, he might notice that “whom” wasn’t used even in the context where it historically has been, possibly indicating a fall from favor among this particular group of speakers.

If you have trouble remembering which is which, just look at the names. The descriptivist describes the language used, without judging it. The prescriptivist prescribes a certain pattern of language use (just like a doctor would prescribe a diet), and feels that deviations are “incorrect”.

Linguists, in general, lean towards being descriptivists, because the field of linguistics is largely dedicated to describing language. Your Grade school english teachers were likely prescriptivists (I’m sorry Mrs. F, but “a lot” will likely be one word by the time your great great grandkids are born). They’re just two different perspectives on language usage, and each has its place.

So, when you talk to a linguist, talk like you would to anybody else. We’re always listening to language, but we’re not judging. Let your prepositions roam free, and worry not about superfluous whom insertion. As long as we understand each other, it’s all good.

(As a parting gift of sorts, here’s my favorite joke on the subject.)

A young, college Freshman walks into the English department on his campus, clearly lost. He walks up to a old man in an open office.
Timidly, he asks “Excuse me, where’s the library at?”
The professor scoffs with distaste.
“Young man, if you’d like answers from me, I’d advise you never to end your sentences with prepositions.”
The young student stands back, thinking for a second, and then rephrases his question. “Where’s the library at, you old fart?”

So, driving home today, I saw a billboard for Mel Gibson’s new “Epic Snuff Film“, Apocalypto. The movie is apparently shot in Mayan (which is cool), and might even warrant me fast forwarding through it. However, what caught my eye was the tagline on the billboard:

No one can outrun their destiny

When I first read this, I felt a disturbance in the force as if thousands of English professors suddenly cried out in horror, and then were silenced.

“Their”, as used in the English of the past, is a plural possessive pronoun. Generally, it was used in sentences like “John and Clarissa stopped by to grab their pie dish” or “The girls all grabbed for their wallets”. This contrasts with the Singular possessive pronouns, “his” and “her” (”John saw his briefcase” and “Kathy hugged her penguin”).

“No one” is, in fact, a grammatically singular subject, which can be counterintuitive at first, because it refers to, well, everybody. We can check this with a simple sentence like “No one sees the purple frog”. Here, we use “sees”, the singular form, rather than “*No one see the purple frog” (Note that an *asterisk before a word or sentence generally means that a sentence isn’t grammatically correct).

So, given that the subject of the sentence (”No one”) is singular, then technically, the possessive used should be singular as well. The tagline, as given, is grammatically incorrect, and if you ask an English major, should be changed to “No one can outrun his or her destiny”. (Read where Language Log discusses this phenomenon.)

This may be more “correct”, but frankly, I think this tagline is cause for celebration. A vast Linguistic party, with lots of books, dictionaries, and a big cake that says “Congratulations, English, on your new gender neutral pronoun!”.

Times are changin’

Languages are constantly changing. When a population needs something new from the language that they speak, they create it. Whether that means new words, new constructions, or new usage patterns, you can’t hold a language still.

Well, English has a new need. Due to modern political correctness, we can no longer say “No one can outrun his destiny”. Although the grammar itself is quite indifferent to the social treatment of gender, it’s true that women are excluded from groups in speech when you use “his” with universal statements. So, we’ve tabooed the “universal his”, but we’ve never had a good way around it. We can use the awkward “his or her”, but human lazyness and reluctance to say more than necessary makes this undesirable. There have been proposals to create gender neutral pronouns (the Spivak pronouns, for one), but they’ve never caught on.

However, as languages tend to do, it looks like English has grown around the problem, and, in spoken usage, the third person plural forms (them, they, their) seem to have sprung up to bridge the gap, at least in this case. Now, this suggestion won’t go over well with lots of prescriptivists (people who think that there is a correct way to speak, and grammar is set), but change is inevitable, and the fact that this construction could make it onto a billboard and be the tagline for a major movie is a good indicator of this direction.

It won’t happen overnight, and it won’t be “acceptable” for some time to come (there are already plenty of blogs trashing this tagline for its rebellion from conventional grammar). However, it will happen. In the same way that “whom” is gradually fading from use, this change will fade in. As one of my favorite quotes goes, “a grammarian trying to stop language change is like a gardener trying to stop continental drift”.

So, slowly but surely, the grammarians will give up, and English will finally have its gender neutral pronoun. When that day comes and the party happens, I’ll be right there at the front of the room, leading everybody in raising their glasses. See, isn’t that liberating?