{"id":496,"date":"2013-09-08T11:10:41","date_gmt":"2013-09-08T15:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/what_to_do_about_language_bullies"},"modified":"2013-11-17T05:09:38","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T05:09:38","slug":"what_to_do_about_language_bullies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2013\/09\/what_to_do_about_language_bullies.html","title":{"rendered":"What To Do About Language Bullies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I enjoyed this Slate article, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/life\/the_good_word\/2013\/09\/language_bullies_pedants_and_grammar_nerds_who_correct_people_all_the_time.html\">Are You a Language Bully?<\/a> a great deal. The one thing I&#8217;d add to it is that most of the things that language bullies like to harp about are actually incorrect when you bother to do a little research. Take the example from the article where an NPR listener complained about using &#8220;decimate&#8221; to mean &#8220;destroying a large portion of&#8221; rather than, &#8220;executing every tenth person.&#8221; A quick survey of no less than <a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/decimate?s=t\">four<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/decimate\">dictionaries<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/oxforddictionaries.com\/definition\/english\/decimate?q=decimate\">reveals<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.cambridge.org\/us\/dictionary\/american-english\/decimate?q=decimate\">that<\/a> every single one of them lists &#8220;destroying a large portion of&#8221; as a definition, and three out of four list it as the primary definition.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re faced with a language bully, do a quick search through a dictionary or through <a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/\">Language Log<\/a>, and there&#8217;s an excellent chance they&#8217;ll have the goods on whatever your bully is complaining about. Your language bully is operating based on whatever feels right to them; the professional linguists who run Language Log enjoy writing Python scripts to crunch through reams of English text in their copious free time.<\/p>\n<p>The other thing about language bullies is that like most bullies, they learned their behavior by being bullied themselves. It might feel good to &#8220;punch the bully in the nose&#8221; with your answer, but instead, please try to be kind and respectful. With proper guidance, language bullies can be reformed! Believe me, I know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other thing about language bullies is that like most bullies, they learned their behavior by being bullied themselves. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}