Sunday, April 04, 2004
Errors
I'd like to commemorate the start* of the 2004 Major League Baseball season (pitch #1 is minutes away, which will be followed soon after by crotch adjustments #1-7) by talking about the misuse of the word irony. I'm one who always balked about the exact meaning and correct application of the term in freshman English class (as a student, not now). (Ponson's opening pitch is a strike thrown to Johnny Damon, who, like me, has not cut his hair in a long time, but who, unlike me, has a full logger's beard.) I take the term to apply only to situations in which expectations are foiled when their opposite occurs, but I've often neglected to consider that irony must usually reveal some sort of human inconsistancy, or any inconsistancy because I'm sure somewhere in Nature there is irony.
Baltimore looks sharp in the field, and not just because of the birds on their uniforms. Newly acquired SS Miguel Tejada-they-come promises to lead a strengthened Oriole staff into the post-season, or at least to a winning season for a change. But the problem with wanton use of the word irony is that it is stretched to apply to any situation which is characterized by extreme improbability, a.k.a. coincidence. Many people all around me, including my true love, take this broad interpretation and implementation of irony, but because I am arrogant and fastidious this tenuous application vexes me.
Research I've done revealed this:
Usage Note: The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply ?coincidental? or ?improbable,? in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence "In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York." Some Panelists noted that this particular usage might be acceptable if Susie had in fact moved to California in order to find a husband, in which case the story could be taken as exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence "Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market," where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency.
Ponson strikes out David Ortiz (damn, he's on one of my fantasy teams) to get out of the top of the first North American inning. Despite lacking any advanced study of semantics (or of grammar for that matter**), I'd love to participate in this Usage panel, or at least to observe their no doubt fiesty caucuses.
Melvin Mora is gunned out one his way to third base by Manny Ramirez. When I read the name Ramirez, I think of the movie Highlander and I hear the gritty bass in the antagonistic voice of James Remar, who played the giant freaky Russian dude, pronounce it with villainous glee. The character of Ramirez, the Spanish peacock, was played by Sean Connery, who is not really Spanish.
Anyway, the most commonly misspoken word, and the one which causes me a singular irritation, is the erroneous contraction of "there" and "is" into "there's" when the object of the clause is plural. For example, There's cars all over the street. Cringe. I understand that everyday spoken language retains the quaint impurity of human existence, but something fundamental and early-learned inside of me cannot abide when a person announces Do not leave yet because there's announcements or There's three men on base.
The Orioles escape the top of the second by completing the wicked and difficult strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play.
*The '04 season technically opened, as it has for the past few seasons, in Japan. The Yankees split a two-game series with Tampa Bay.
**A good deal of my fine-tuning as a student of grammar came last year as I tap-danced precariously through my first year of teaching English (especially to the freshmen). It was humbling, but also revealing about my own high school English education. Dammit, my kids will be able to use dashes, semi-colons, colons. They will neither misuse comprise nor will they misuse neither and nor (like I just may have). They will neither write nor say "Everyone did there homework" but they will also shirk from writing or saying "Everyone did their homework" because it, too, as I have learned, is incorrect.
I'd like to commemorate the start* of the 2004 Major League Baseball season (pitch #1 is minutes away, which will be followed soon after by crotch adjustments #1-7) by talking about the misuse of the word irony. I'm one who always balked about the exact meaning and correct application of the term in freshman English class (as a student, not now). (Ponson's opening pitch is a strike thrown to Johnny Damon, who, like me, has not cut his hair in a long time, but who, unlike me, has a full logger's beard.) I take the term to apply only to situations in which expectations are foiled when their opposite occurs, but I've often neglected to consider that irony must usually reveal some sort of human inconsistancy, or any inconsistancy because I'm sure somewhere in Nature there is irony.
Baltimore looks sharp in the field, and not just because of the birds on their uniforms. Newly acquired SS Miguel Tejada-they-come promises to lead a strengthened Oriole staff into the post-season, or at least to a winning season for a change. But the problem with wanton use of the word irony is that it is stretched to apply to any situation which is characterized by extreme improbability, a.k.a. coincidence. Many people all around me, including my true love, take this broad interpretation and implementation of irony, but because I am arrogant and fastidious this tenuous application vexes me.
Research I've done revealed this:
Usage Note: The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply ?coincidental? or ?improbable,? in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence "In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York." Some Panelists noted that this particular usage might be acceptable if Susie had in fact moved to California in order to find a husband, in which case the story could be taken as exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence "Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market," where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency.
Ponson strikes out David Ortiz (damn, he's on one of my fantasy teams) to get out of the top of the first North American inning. Despite lacking any advanced study of semantics (or of grammar for that matter**), I'd love to participate in this Usage panel, or at least to observe their no doubt fiesty caucuses.
Melvin Mora is gunned out one his way to third base by Manny Ramirez. When I read the name Ramirez, I think of the movie Highlander and I hear the gritty bass in the antagonistic voice of James Remar, who played the giant freaky Russian dude, pronounce it with villainous glee. The character of Ramirez, the Spanish peacock, was played by Sean Connery, who is not really Spanish.
Anyway, the most commonly misspoken word, and the one which causes me a singular irritation, is the erroneous contraction of "there" and "is" into "there's" when the object of the clause is plural. For example, There's cars all over the street. Cringe. I understand that everyday spoken language retains the quaint impurity of human existence, but something fundamental and early-learned inside of me cannot abide when a person announces Do not leave yet because there's announcements or There's three men on base.
The Orioles escape the top of the second by completing the wicked and difficult strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play.
*The '04 season technically opened, as it has for the past few seasons, in Japan. The Yankees split a two-game series with Tampa Bay.
**A good deal of my fine-tuning as a student of grammar came last year as I tap-danced precariously through my first year of teaching English (especially to the freshmen). It was humbling, but also revealing about my own high school English education. Dammit, my kids will be able to use dashes, semi-colons, colons. They will neither misuse comprise nor will they misuse neither and nor (like I just may have). They will neither write nor say "Everyone did there homework" but they will also shirk from writing or saying "Everyone did their homework" because it, too, as I have learned, is incorrect.
