[Music]
[Applause]
so my teenage daughter came home from
school one day she stopped by my office
to let me know that she was going to go
to a friend’s house so I said have you
finished your homework and she said yeah
I’m done my homework and I said so I’m a
lexicographer
I write and edit dictionaries for a
living that means that I take language
very seriously and like any parent who
takes language very seriously and then
here’s something totally ungrammatical
come out of their child’s mouth I
decided to take the high road I
corrected her I said no no not I’m done
my homework I’m done with my homework
and because my daughter is a teenager
and also has a mother who’s a
lexicographer she said right I’m done my
homework
now she wasn’t sassing me or she wasn’t
just sassing me she was doing something
very subtle she was reminding me about
the importance of her linguistic
identity her dialect so dialects are
these little subsets of a language they
usually have their own vocabulary their
own grammar they even have their own
accents if you’re aware of dialects at
all it’s probably the regional ones so
American English British English
southern whatever it is they speak in
Boston
love you Boston but dialects can also be
sliced up in myriad other ways dialects
can be divided by race and ethnicity by
age by occupation by state of life even
by immigration status that means that
dialects are actually linguistic
identity markers they tell you something
about the speaker and most people speak
multiple dialects and because their
identity markers they have been
historically weaponized so about 300
years ago English grammarians put forth
a radical idea about language something
that had never been thought of before
and that is that the way some people
speak is intrinsically better than the
way other people speak now prior to this
you spoke the way you spoke your dialect
was your dialect and there was really no
judgment placed on it
but after this the way that educated
upper-class city dwellers spoke was held
up as being elegant refined educated and
even in some cases morally good and by
extension the people who spoke that
dialect the educated upper-class city
dialect those people were also elegant
refined and morally good this is the
beginning of what we know as proper
English if you spoke proper English you
were proper and if you didn’t speak
proper English you did not speak that
dialect and you were not so proper so
how is this play out into the language
today let’s talk here regardless
now you all as soon as I said
irregardless went black and you
immediately began that the great litany
of insults that irregardless has enacted
unto the English language it’s not a
word it’s illogical
it’s uneducated therefore we hate it but
here’s the thing irregardless is none of
those things it is most certainly a word
regret to inform you of that is it
illogical well it’s no more illogical
than inflammable to mean flammable and
unthaw to mean thoug but no one is
burning down grocery stores because
they’re frozen chicken package says to
unthaw in the refrigerator and is it
uneducated irregardless shows up in the
oral arguments of Supreme Court cases
and those lawyers are pretty highly
educated there is another reason why we
have learned to hate irregardless and
that is because about 300 years ago when
irregardless first showed up it was a
dialect word irregardless is native to
the dialects of the Upper Midwest and
the Great Lakes region and irregardless
was mostly used at that point by country
folk and because it was used only by
country folk and only in one small part
of the country and it was not part of
this broader educated elegant dialect
that we now think of as standard English
that meant that irregardless was ripe
for mocking and the people who used it
were also right for mocking now we think
of English as this big monolithic static
thing but that’s not actually an
accurate way of looking at the language
English is a lot more like a river when
you look at it it looks like one
cohesive ribbon of water but it’s
actually made up of dozens sometimes
even honey
rids of different currents and each of
those currents in that River is doing
its own thing some move fast some move
slow some even move in the opposite
direction that the river is flowing but
the thing is that if you take away one
current from a river it will alter the
entire river its ecosystem its direction
even its general health dialects are the
currents that make up English now we
have been raised to think of one dialect
Standard English as English but in fact
English will only thrive if it is made
up of all of the dialects what this
means then is when someone says
something like irregardless to you and
you correct them you are actually
flattening English into something that
it is not in its original uses
irregardless was actually an emphatic
form of regardless and it was used to
end conversation so there was no more
argument about a point so a typical
sentence is regardless of X and E
regardless of Y Z now to nerds and
linguists like me that’s actually a very
delicate and a beautiful grammatical
function irregardless has a purpose even
if it’s not in your dialect even if it’s
not in standard English the other thing
we do when we correct people’s speech is
we don’t just flatten the language we
flatten people I’m done my homework now
this is typical of Philadelphia English
and everyone of every age every
education level pretty much every
socio-economic bracket uses it that’s
not why I’m done my homework is
important it’s important because when my
daughter says to me I’m done my homework
she’s communicating something to me
about who she
is something intimate she’s telling me
that even though she was born and spent
most of her life in New England she
considers Philadelphia home and she’s
also saying something else about our
relationship she knows that I’m done my
homework is not standard English she
knows that I’m done with my homework is
how she would speak to a teacher or what
she would write in a paper but she’s
comfortable enough in our relationship
that she can relax into her linguistic
identity and say to me I’m done my
homework when I correct her I’m not
telling her what standard English is she
knows what it is what I’m communicating
to her is that her linguistic identity
is not as good as my linguistic identity
rivers need to flow English as a river
is kind of crazy it’s wild
it’s rushing it kind of goes all over
the place to just like its speakers and
lots of people panic about that and feel
like you got to bring it in folks but
the thing is is that when you start
constricting a river when you damn it
things downstream diet cultures
relationships people your particular
dialect no matter how it is judged is
your linguistic identity so I want to
challenge you today when someone says
irregardless in your presence as they no
doubt will I’m gonna challenge you to
not take that as an opportunity to
correct them I guarantee that if they
use irregardless as part of their native
dialect they know it’s not part of
standard English I would instead
encourage you to see that as an
invitation that is an invitation to
intimacy it is an invitation to know a
specific piece of them to swim and a
current of English that you may not know
anything about regardless of how you
feel about another person’s dialect it
is integral to who they are
so don’t smash it let them speak them
and the ear regardless of whether you
think it’s worth putting yourself out
there or worth trying to educate people
about your own native dialect you have
the right to be you you should speak you
thank you
[Applause]
[Applause]
so my teenage daughter came home from
school one day she stopped by my office
to let me know that she was going to go
to a friend’s house so I said have you
finished your homework and she said yeah
I’m done my homework and I said so I’m a
lexicographer
I write and edit dictionaries for a
living that means that I take language
very seriously and like any parent who
takes language very seriously and then
here’s something totally ungrammatical
come out of their child’s mouth I
decided to take the high road I
corrected her I said no no not I’m done
my homework I’m done with my homework
and because my daughter is a teenager
and also has a mother who’s a
lexicographer she said right I’m done my
homework
now she wasn’t sassing me or she wasn’t
just sassing me she was doing something
very subtle she was reminding me about
the importance of her linguistic
identity her dialect so dialects are
these little subsets of a language they
usually have their own vocabulary their
own grammar they even have their own
accents if you’re aware of dialects at
all it’s probably the regional ones so
American English British English
southern whatever it is they speak in
Boston
love you Boston but dialects can also be
sliced up in myriad other ways dialects
can be divided by race and ethnicity by
age by occupation by state of life even
by immigration status that means that
dialects are actually linguistic
identity markers they tell you something
about the speaker and most people speak
multiple dialects and because their
identity markers they have been
historically weaponized so about 300
years ago English grammarians put forth
a radical idea about language something
that had never been thought of before
and that is that the way some people
speak is intrinsically better than the
way other people speak now prior to this
you spoke the way you spoke your dialect
was your dialect and there was really no
judgment placed on it
but after this the way that educated
upper-class city dwellers spoke was held
up as being elegant refined educated and
even in some cases morally good and by
extension the people who spoke that
dialect the educated upper-class city
dialect those people were also elegant
refined and morally good this is the
beginning of what we know as proper
English if you spoke proper English you
were proper and if you didn’t speak
proper English you did not speak that
dialect and you were not so proper so
how is this play out into the language
today let’s talk here regardless
now you all as soon as I said
irregardless went black and you
immediately began that the great litany
of insults that irregardless has enacted
unto the English language it’s not a
word it’s illogical
it’s uneducated therefore we hate it but
here’s the thing irregardless is none of
those things it is most certainly a word
regret to inform you of that is it
illogical well it’s no more illogical
than inflammable to mean flammable and
unthaw to mean thoug but no one is
burning down grocery stores because
they’re frozen chicken package says to
unthaw in the refrigerator and is it
uneducated irregardless shows up in the
oral arguments of Supreme Court cases
and those lawyers are pretty highly
educated there is another reason why we
have learned to hate irregardless and
that is because about 300 years ago when
irregardless first showed up it was a
dialect word irregardless is native to
the dialects of the Upper Midwest and
the Great Lakes region and irregardless
was mostly used at that point by country
folk and because it was used only by
country folk and only in one small part
of the country and it was not part of
this broader educated elegant dialect
that we now think of as standard English
that meant that irregardless was ripe
for mocking and the people who used it
were also right for mocking now we think
of English as this big monolithic static
thing but that’s not actually an
accurate way of looking at the language
English is a lot more like a river when
you look at it it looks like one
cohesive ribbon of water but it’s
actually made up of dozens sometimes
even honey
rids of different currents and each of
those currents in that River is doing
its own thing some move fast some move
slow some even move in the opposite
direction that the river is flowing but
the thing is that if you take away one
current from a river it will alter the
entire river its ecosystem its direction
even its general health dialects are the
currents that make up English now we
have been raised to think of one dialect
Standard English as English but in fact
English will only thrive if it is made
up of all of the dialects what this
means then is when someone says
something like irregardless to you and
you correct them you are actually
flattening English into something that
it is not in its original uses
irregardless was actually an emphatic
form of regardless and it was used to
end conversation so there was no more
argument about a point so a typical
sentence is regardless of X and E
regardless of Y Z now to nerds and
linguists like me that’s actually a very
delicate and a beautiful grammatical
function irregardless has a purpose even
if it’s not in your dialect even if it’s
not in standard English the other thing
we do when we correct people’s speech is
we don’t just flatten the language we
flatten people I’m done my homework now
this is typical of Philadelphia English
and everyone of every age every
education level pretty much every
socio-economic bracket uses it that’s
not why I’m done my homework is
important it’s important because when my
daughter says to me I’m done my homework
she’s communicating something to me
about who she
is something intimate she’s telling me
that even though she was born and spent
most of her life in New England she
considers Philadelphia home and she’s
also saying something else about our
relationship she knows that I’m done my
homework is not standard English she
knows that I’m done with my homework is
how she would speak to a teacher or what
she would write in a paper but she’s
comfortable enough in our relationship
that she can relax into her linguistic
identity and say to me I’m done my
homework when I correct her I’m not
telling her what standard English is she
knows what it is what I’m communicating
to her is that her linguistic identity
is not as good as my linguistic identity
rivers need to flow English as a river
is kind of crazy it’s wild
it’s rushing it kind of goes all over
the place to just like its speakers and
lots of people panic about that and feel
like you got to bring it in folks but
the thing is is that when you start
constricting a river when you damn it
things downstream diet cultures
relationships people your particular
dialect no matter how it is judged is
your linguistic identity so I want to
challenge you today when someone says
irregardless in your presence as they no
doubt will I’m gonna challenge you to
not take that as an opportunity to
correct them I guarantee that if they
use irregardless as part of their native
dialect they know it’s not part of
standard English I would instead
encourage you to see that as an
invitation that is an invitation to
intimacy it is an invitation to know a
specific piece of them to swim and a
current of English that you may not know
anything about regardless of how you
feel about another person’s dialect it
is integral to who they are
so don’t smash it let them speak them
and the ear regardless of whether you
think it’s worth putting yourself out
there or worth trying to educate people
about your own native dialect you have
the right to be you you should speak you
thank you
[Applause]
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