Livin’ in a prescriptivist world (but I am not a prescriptivist girl)

Wanted: a good language podcast that doesn’t just talk from a prescriptivist perspective.

I listen to two language programs - The Word Nerds (”A weekly podcast about words, language, and why we say the things we do) and A Way With Words (”A humorous and instructional joyride through the English language”). They’re both pretty funny, and offer a few pearls of wisdom, but they are both a bit “preachy” (of the two, The Word Nerds is much better in this respect*). People write or call in and ask questions about the proper usage or pronunciation of a word, which is fine in and of itself, but the way the questions are answered are a bit disturbing to someone who aspires to be a descriptive linguist like myself. (Wikipedia on prescriptive vs. descriptive, to further inform yourself if you are so inclined)

I’ll describe the problem with an example of a call from a recent episode of A Way With Words. A caller complains that her co-worker pronounces the word “crayon” like the word “crown” ([kɹɑʊn] instead of something like [kɹæn] or [kɹæjən]). Rather than trying to figure out why the co-worker would color a picture with something a king wears on his head, they simply laughed and said that it was ridiculous. It would have potentially been interesting to ask where the co-worker was from, what kind of regional accent she had, and maybe propose some sort of explanation for her pronunciation.

Anyone know of a show like that?

*This parenthetical aside was added after a comment by The Word Nerds’ Dave Shepherd down below. Read his comment and my reply for more on this, and some more of my thoughts on what it is I really think is missing from available language podcasts.

6 Responses to “Livin’ in a prescriptivist world (but I am not a prescriptivist girl)”

Danny Silverman Says:
June 17th, 2006 at 9:09 am

Hmm, well, isn’t the beauty of the many-to-many web that you can create one yourself? I’d listen!

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Aaron Says:
June 17th, 2006 at 10:45 am

@Danny - that is *one of* the beauties of the many-to-many web. Unfortunately, some people abuse it by creating things they really shouldn’t. The *real* beauty of the web is that people have the option to simply not consume any media they don’t like. To do a good language podcast, you really need to be an “expert”. Even though I use the term loosely, I don’t know that I really fit that bill…

I’ll just stick to blogging for now - people seem to be pretty willing to keep coming back even if a few posts are boring. With podcasts/radio programs I think you really need to keep your audience entertained ‘most all the time.

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Dave Says:
June 20th, 2006 at 5:55 am

Thanks for mentioning The Word Nerds, Aaron.

I was surprised to hear you say that The Word Nerds was preachy and prescriptivist. We really bend over backwards to be just the opposite, to simply describe language and talk about how language change is interesting. We, for example, would never, ever laugh at somebody’s pronunciation of “crayon,” but would instead try to figure out what or where exactly the isogloss was behind which the word is pronounced one way or another.

Incidentally, when my own son (who is now 21 years old) was a small child, he picked up the pronunciation [kɹɑʊn] from his peers, I presume, rather than [kɹæjən], which is pretty much the way my wife and I pronounce the word. We didn’t try to correct him then, and I wouldn’t correct any adult now.

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Aaron Says:
June 20th, 2006 at 11:33 am

Thanks for the comment, Dave! I do love your show, and The Words Nerds is certainly better than A Way With Words in regards to the balance between prescriptivist/descriptivist.

I think what I’m looking for (and it is through no fault of your own) is a show that’s catered to those with a bit more training in theoretical linguistics than your average podcast-listener. There’s a fine line between basing a show on linguistic theory and appealing to a larger audience, and it’s clear that a podcast with any aspirations of reaching more than a few hundred people must err on the side of less theory.

Your comment did remind me that I never pointed out that the Word Nerds was the better of the two podcasts in that regard, so I’ve updated the post to reflect that.

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frankie Says:
June 20th, 2006 at 7:09 pm

see, whenever I listen to The Word Nerds, I don’t think of it as prescriptivist at all; I do, however, identify with your complaint that it’s not in-depth enough. Most of the time I feel like they just list off a bunch of ideas without elaborating on much, if anything, which is frustrating. (This is based on older podcasts; I haven’t listened to anything too new so maybe it has evolved.) It’s still a fun listen, though.

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Dave Says:
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:12 am

Ah yes, well, if [i]The Word Nerds[/i] were a JOB…that paid us MONEY…so that we could LIVE from doing it–we might be able to go into depth. But this is essentially a hobby that we all do in our spare time. (For me, the producer, it demands an extra 10-12 hours per week of said spare time, week after week, for 70 weeks now, without letup, for no money at all.)

I am a “recovering academic” who was turned down for tenure at a major U.S. university (for political and financial reasons). Every time we do a [i]Word Nerds[/i] show, I am painfully aware that we are skimming the surface, that we are going into no depth at all, speaking from an academic-linguistic point of view.

But we try at least a couple times a month to emphasize that we are the initators of a podcast conversation (similar to the blog conversation that Aaron has mentioned in a more recent post than this one). I am the only one of the three of us who has any coursework at all in linguistics. My brother is a diligent student of English grammar, and Howard Chang is a classicist and very well-read Latin teacher. But we are not linguists.

I wish more linguists would get involved in the Word Nerds’ podcast conversation. Sometimes we hear from some, but not usually. Most of the time we just hear from enthusiastic language fans. We never claimed to do more than that. We’ve got a commentable blog, and we just installed a bulletin-board forum. We’re waiting for linguists to jump onboard.

All that said, I think our linguistic analysis is usually much more detailed and robust than some of the “real” radio shows on NPR that purport to look at language and linguistics.

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