Comment on Why do people say things like "I didn't do nothing"?
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 4 days agoIt’s not a grammatical mistake.
People use language differently than you. Get over it.
FWIW, double negatives have longer been used as a way to add emphasis on the statement than they have been considered “incorrect”.
Tedesche@lemmy.world 4 days ago
That’s naïve. One can appreciate differences in grammar usage and take them into account when trying to understand someone else in the context of cultural differences and still acknowledge that grammar has formal rules. If you’re just going to say that grammatical rules can be ignored, why bother teaching grammar at all? Because as much as there might be deviations from the norm, there is still a norm, and it’s important there is one. One cannot appreciate jazz without learning classical musical structures; the existence of jazz does not negate that music has said structures, and jazz wouldn’t be jazz without them.
intelisense@lemm.ee 4 days ago
I think you have this back to front. The grammar rules were written long after the language was spoken. Their purpose is to describe how language is actually used. Language evolves, though, so grammar must evolve too.
Tedesche@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I think you and many other people in this thread have this ass to mouth and don’t know which end is which.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 4 days ago
it’s funny how you say I’m naive and then proceed to insist that your grammar rules are somehow more right than another’s.
While double negatives might be inappropriate in, for example, technical documents; there are a great number of contexts in which they’re quite common and normal. I’m not saying “rules” don’t broadly exist, but rather that they vary from place to place, culture to culture (including Sub and micro-cultures).
Saying that jazz has certain structures is one thing. Same with technical writing. But that ignores the possibility of blues or other folk songs from which jazz evolved out of. Jazz and Blues are not better or more correct than the other.
By the way, you should look into the sorts of people who have historically agreed with you. Classists and racists. For example, Robert Lowth, who argued people sounded dumb, essentially, because it was illogical. Same with many of the grammarians in the US who consistently taught kids that ‘they sound dumb’ because they happen to have a colloquial dialect different than their own.
Tedesche@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Why is that funny? I fail to see how contending that grammatical rules are valid and valuable contradicts with the notion that you claiming “everyone has their own rules, get over it” is naïve. They’re not in contradiction at all.
Nothing I said contradicts that. I simply pointed out that that’s no reason to disregard the rules of grammar.
I made no such racist argument and for you to suggest that I’m racist merely because I pointed out that grammatical rules have purpose and utility simply demonstrates how little you understand the historical context you’re trying to weaponize and how eager you are to slander those who disagree with you as racist. You’re not winning yourself any real points for combatting racism, dude, you’re just exposing yourself as an empty virtue signaler.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 4 days ago
First off. lets look at people who have, historically espoused the idea that double negatives are “illogical” and "ungrammatical.
Robert Lowth, for example, was a Bishop of Oxford; and leader in the Church of England. Raging classist. who liked to cite the use of double negatives as a reason for why commoners were stupid.
Lindley Murray, He was a Quaker, a Lawyer, and Loyalist during the American revolution whose loyalties were likely tied to protecting his wealth, which came from his father’s shipping company. His prescriptive rules as for English Grammar was oft cited as an example of “poor” education, and his rules were focused on emulating “the best writers”… which were universally rich nobles. Murray’s rules were not based on common use, but rather the use by a specific subset of predominately white elites.
Both Murray and Lowth were members of those elites, and contributed significantly to perceptions that not speaking as they had was a sign of poor education and poor upbringing. They believed it was so largely because that’s how they themselves spoke and wrote . That perception was taken to it’s extreme in defending slavery, arguing that, for example, slaves and their descendants were inferior- or inhuman- because of how they spoke.
I cannot say if you are racist. I don’t know you. I can say, however, that the most-often cited proponents of double negatives being bad grammar were straight up assholes. I generally assume that most people don’t know that. But that brings me back to what I’ve been trying to say this entire time: Prescriptive Grammar assumes that a specific way of speaking or writing is somehow correct, and all others are, if not outright wrong, then inferior. And that is blatantly untrue.