Immoral and irrational welcome here
Your weekend in review and Monday morning start on the week:
Item: Did you know that prescriptivists are more rational and more moral than descriptivists? Neither did I.
Item: Who will stand with me to defend Baltimore? You know why you’re still here. Say so.
Item: Your word of the week is gonfalon.
Comments
Tut, tut, you're at it again, Mr McIntyre. Dr Hart did not say prescriptivists were more rational and moral than descriptivists. He said prescriptivism has a rational and moral worth that descriptivism lacks. The difference is not so subtle that it will escape you.
Posted by: Picky | August 22, 2011 12:12 PM
I take your point, Picky, about the narrow meaning of that particular sentence. But when it is taken in the context of the whole essay, which describes not only positions but the personalities of the people who hold them, I don't think that I have made an impermissible inference.
Besides, how can a quality be moral or rational apart from the people who espouse it?
Posted by: John McIntyre | August 22, 2011 3:21 PM
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble
Making a Giant hit into a double
Words that are weighty with nothing but trouble ...
Posted by: fev | August 22, 2011 3:24 PM
Come, come, John. Kindness to animals may be moral, and Marxism may be rational, but what does that say of Hitler or Stalin?
Posted by: Picky | August 22, 2011 3:53 PM
So glad you chose that word. I knew about the Italians in the 15th century. Yet I was still confusing it with granfalloon, the Vonegut concept.
Posted by: mae | August 22, 2011 9:49 PM