Re: can-may

On Mon, Dec 27, 2004 at 09:14:29AM -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
> It's not entirely prescriptivism, Tristan.  Quite a number of us still use
> "may" in the way I described.  And just because a word like "may" has a
> "politeness" factor doesn't make it prescriptive.  Is it prescriptive to use
> the Sie or the vous form in German and French language when you address
> strangers instead of the du or the tu form?  These rules are probably more
> insisted upon than the can/may forms in English, but I still maintain that
> you are using prescriptivism incorrectly here when CUSTOM, not a made-up
> rule, still insists on these distinctions in polite discourse.
I think you're the one misunderstanding, Sally.  Tristan overreacted, to
be sure; but when anything, including custom, "insists" upon a particular
usage distinction, that's a form of prescriptivism.   In particular,
any rule we don't automatically follow in our native speech before we're
taught it in school is definitely "made-up".

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That!  There's nothing wrong with
prescriptivism per se - it's quite useful to have a set of common
standards for formal writing, etc.  But one must beware the common error
of identifying the language you get when applying all these rules as
"genuine" English, with the implication that all other forms of English
are somehow false, or at least inferior.

-Marcos

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