The wiseguy problem

"You ain't supposed to say ain't."

William Safire called it “the wiseguy problem” in his book On Language. He put it this way: “When the person you are talking to makes a mistake in grammar, or pronounces a word mistakenly, do you interrupt with a correction? Or would such a correction be seen as a put-down, the action of a wiseguy? Or would failure to correct be taken as agreement with a mistake?” The irony is that as a language columnist for the New York Times, Safire was paid to be a wiseguy

Most of us correct somebody’s language usage at some point in our lives, even if it’s just correcting our own children. As parents, correcting language comes with the job. Same with teachers and same with copy editors, a job I had for much of my newspaper career. But even when we are not “on the job,” the temptation to correct is ever present, at least for those of us who think we know best.

The wiseguy problem is, should you yield to the temptation? If so, how do you do so in such a way that doesn’t offend the other person and possibly affect your relationship? Can you be sure you are even right? And by making yourself an authority, aren’t you setting yourself up for a fall the next time you yourself misuse the language?

Kory Stamper, who has worked for Merriam-Webster for several years, addresses this dilemma in her recent book Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. One source of conflict over language, she says, has to do with word choices and pronunciations relating to dialects. English-speaking people from different countries or from different parts of the same country often use different words for the same thing (sack vs. bag, or pop vs. soda, for example) or say the same word differently. Americans, for example, emphasize the first syllable in the word elsewhere, while the British emphasize the second. Who's right and who's wrong can often depend upon where the speakers happen to be at the moment.

Even standard English, the kind taught in school by English teachers and said on radio and television by professional announcers and newscasters, is itself a dialect, Stamper says. It may seem right and proper, yet in so many ways it remains arbitrary.

In one of the most amusing chapters in the book, Stamper tells of her experiences with the word irregardless. When users of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary complained of that word's presence in the dictionary, she was charged with writing a reply. At first, she says, she doubted it was even in the dictionary. Surely irregardless wouldn't be accepted in the dictionary she was working for. Yet there it is. It is identified as not being standard English, but it's there because, standard or not, many people use it in both speech and in writing. If people use it, then it's a word; and if it's a word, it belongs in the dictionary.

As Stamper continued to study this word, she found it has been used, often by educated people, for many years. Irregardless may mean the same thing as regardless. But then inflammable means the same thing as flammable.

Correction of others, thus, is tricky business. Sometimes even when you're right, you're wrong.