In the near isolation imposed by Covid I have been doing more on-line reading of current newspapers and “thought” journals than usual, enough to get a clearer sense than I usually have of actual linguistic trends. I have noticed for example, that there is a good deal of questionable question-begging going on. I shall try to elucidate this doubtlessly cryptic remark in a moment or two, after stating a truth about language in general. Complex language is one of the definitive characteristics of our human species. Some have said that it is the definitive characteristic, the one that separates us from all other biological life. Not so much homo sapiens (a thinking human) as homo loquens (a talking one). Yet as an element of culture, spoken language is markedly mutable. Language is ever changing. Our own English language has changed so dramatically over the centuries as to make many of our early documents and texts incomprehensible to today’s native speakers. But it is easier to spot the linguistic change when reading the Canterbury Tales than when reading the current New Yorker.
In my experience most Americans seem to believe there is such a thing as good or correct English, and that the sole conceivable job of an English professor must be to know what it is. I deduce that from years of meeting strangers at cocktail parties who, upon hearing of my profession, would answer uneasily, “Well, I better watch my grammar.” Surely, however, it should be obvious that nobody is invigilating our national speech, certainly not English professors. The fact of linguistic change, indeed, makes even English professors hesitate about prescribing what is and what is not prescriptive “good” English. Good English is a real thing, but also a moving target. Good English is the English spoken by careful and educated speakers. It is written in books, but not chiseled in stone, so to speak. I was taught that should I pick up the phone to the question “May I speak to John?” the correct answer was “This is he.” Alfred the Great didn’t have a phone, but had he had one, he would have said the equivalent of “That’s me”. That was the Queen’s English in the ninth century and even kings spoke it.
There is a difference between sensible flexibility and abandoning the very idea of a linguistic standard. Though it is difficult to document, I think that the quality of the spoken language is in noticeable decline in this country, especially among the young. The decline is not simply a matter of slovenly grammar or overused slang. Many people seem not to realize that the purpose of spoken language is to communicate their needs, ideas, observations, requests—all things requiring a minimal degree of precision and discrimination. We do need to hold the line somewhere. The linguistic hill on which I fear I shall die is the necessary but apparently doomed distinction between the verbs lie (intransitive) and lay (transitive). That seems to be a lost cause. Could I have better luck with begging the question? All of a sudden people—including people one might think ought to know better—are saying that such-and-such begs the question when what they mean is that such-and-such raises or invites the question. The answer to my own question—can I do anything about it?—is of course No. But it practically begs for a quixotic blog essay.
Begging the question is actually the English translation of a learned Latin term from the classical rhetoricians: petitio principii. One expert defines petitio principii as “a form of logical fallacy or circular reasoning in which the resolution of contestable matter is assumed in the premise in which it is advanced.” Sort of like one of the witticisms of Sir John Harrington: “Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.” Begging the question—not a good thing, a habit of weak thinkers, fraudsters, and political hacks. This is very different from the neutral and declarative way in which I see the phrase used today. “The power exercised by a single senator from West Virginia begs the question of the viability of current Senate filibuster rules.” How does this come about, linguistically speaking?
Words can outlast the objects of their signification, often for a long time. Fifteen miles north of us there was for a long time an intimidating traffic circle at the junction of two major roads and a couple of minor ones. Nearby was a large automobile dealership called Circle Ford. Eventually the highway department rebuilt the site as a more conventional junction governed by traffic lights. The erasure of the traffic circle had no effect on Circle Ford, of course. Think of all the places in America still bearing the names of milling operations that disappeared a century or two ago. A notable linguistic scholar of the Victorian period, the Rev. Isaac Taylor, wrote a wonderful book, Words and Places,* showing the remarkable continuity of place-names, among the oldest surviving words in our languages, so ancient as to be in effect prehistoric.
But just as history leaves behind the material things our nouns denote, so also does it abandon the beliefs, ideas, whole world views they reference. The orphaned words may simply die, but they often find foster homes. At least since the time of the Renaissance and until fairly recently, some rudimentary training in classical rhetoric was a part of youth’s basic education. When Falstaff says to Prince Hal (1Henry IV: 2, 4) I deny your major, what was supposed to be funny even to the groundlings in Shakespeare’s audience is the old sot’s ignorant garbling of some technical Latin rhetorical terms relating to the major and minor premises of logical propositions. My own parents, rural high school graduates of the 1920s, were actually taught things called “elocution” and “public speaking,” the arts of speaking in a precise and effective manner. To beg the question is simply too good a phrase to abandon simply because you don’t know what it means. Make it mean something else. Or keep it even in an apparently meaningless form if it speaks to you. According to legend we get one of the greatest of all British pub names from the pious Puritan apothegm God encompasseth us.
*Isaac Taylor [1829-1901], Words and Places, or Etymological Illustrations of History, Ethnology, and Geography, a true golden oldie first published in 1864 with frequent re-editions, some with expansions, into the 20th century. There were several erudite Isaac Taylors, including this man’s more famous father, also a clergyman, and also well worth reading if there be world enough and time.
