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Anonymous Posted 17 years ago
Linguistics Studies

Educated Americans

"Educated Americans have a tendency to think that intelligence can be directly assessed through the surrogate of compliance with the rules of Standard English grammar"

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1022#more-1022

Is that true? Do educated Americans have that tendency?
  

Top answer

I think so. We tend to assume that people are more intelligent if they speak correctly and less intelligent if they speak poorly. Proper grammar is a mark of a good education, so those who are more educated will see that others who speak with proper grammar must therefore be more intelligent.

— Old Man Gordon

  • I think so.
  • We tend to assume that people are more intelligent if they speak correctly and less intelligent if they speak poorly.
  • Proper grammar is a mark of a good education, so those who are more educated will see that others who speak with proper grammar must therefore be more intelligent.
  • I'm not defending this as a criteria, but I am confirming that that's what many of us think.
  • I'm frankly surprised that you'd ask.
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39 Answers
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I think so. We tend to assume that people are more intelligent if they speak correctly and less intelligent if they speak poorly. Proper grammar is a mark of a good education, so those who are more educated will see that others who speak with proper grammar must therefore be more intelligent.

I'm not defending this as a criteria, but I am confirming that that's what many of us think.
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Gordon, really? You equate standard English with intelligence? I equate it with a standard education, but not intelligence. Perhaps because I've spent too much time editing the work of highly intelligent scientists and engineers who specialized too quickly in their field and can't write a lick.

I know I'm going to regret posting this, because now it will appear on my "My Discussion" list
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<I equate it with a standard education, but not intelligence. >

So would I.
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Anonymous"Educated Fanatic Americans people have a tendency to think that intelligence every characteristic of a person can be directly assessed through the surrogate of compliance with the rules of Standard
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GG- please note that I don't necessarily equate the two, but I do think that many people do. Engineers and scientists would be in a clearly different category. When we meet someone in daily life who is a native English speaker and that person doesn't use proper subject verb agreement, I'm sure that we suspect that person MAY BE less intelligent.

I should also ask...are we talking about
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whether adverbs go in between the meaningless marker to and the accompanying plain verb in an infinitival clause.
This comment from the referenced article was interesting. Meaningless? Shall we drop the to of all infinitives? May as well, according to this.
AnonymousDo educated Americans have that tendency?
I don'
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CalifJim
whether adverbs go in between the meaningless marker to and the accompanying plain verb in an infinitival clause.
This comment from the referenced article was interesting.  Meaningless?  Shall we drop the to of all infinitives?  May as well, according to this.
Pullum isn't arguing that we should drop the to
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Whilst it may be true that on the whole the amount of education a person receives is proportional to the level of his intelligence, the corollary, that the level of ones intelligience is proportional to the education one has received, is not true. Any educated person who believes the contrary is overeducated for his intelligence.
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Yes, Anon 1, many people from many countries think like that, and therefore those who wish to appear intelligent strive to comply with the standard "rules". And are those who strive to appear bright a brighter bunch on the whole? I suggest they are, for they are those who particularly wish to partake in the knowledge educated people have to offer, and to be accepted themselves as capable of making
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Anonymous That is why you no doubt use essentially standard English yourself
It is certainly remarkable that those who post most vociferously about the perfidy of Standard English prescriptivists always do so in English that is prescriptively perfectly Standard.

MrP
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