I love xkcd. It has been a part of my morning coffee routine for years, and I still look forward to every new comic. I have seen where Munroe’s work has occasionally garnered criticism and never understood it. There’s even an xkcd sucks website, which doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. xkcd is consistently smart, funny, and awesome.
The insight Munroe brings to xkcd has even motivated me to examine my behavior. For example, I’ve never been a sports guy, and my youth was a bit tougher for that. As an adult, I’ve felt mostly comfortable in my geekiness, but I used to put up a bit of a shell when it came to sports. I’d take great pleasure in referring to the “Super Ball” and generally showing how little sports meant to me. Munroe’s comic on the matter, and more importantly, his mouseover text, made me reconsider the issue. You know what? I was being a dick.
However, xkcd‘s recent comic on the use of the expression “I could care less” is different. It hasn’t motivated me to change, and hasn’t given me a new insight on myself. In my opinion, Munroe got it wrong with this one. It got under my skin, I think because it put me into a corner: either I am correcting people because of my deep care for them, or I’m an arrogant automaton, opening my mouth out of reflex. In my case, neither is true.
I get that language evolves. I may not always like it when a new meme comes along, or the way we’ve been using a word suddenly changes around me, but I adapt. “Taking a constitutional” used to mean going for a walk. For some reason, many people now take that to mean a bathroom break. Noted. Dangling prepositions are also just fine in my book these days. “A dangling preposition is one thing up with which I shall not put” may be the correct way of saying things historically, but now it just sounds damn peculiar.
“I could care less” is not a case of language evolving. The delineation between “could” and “could not” remains 100% clear. This isn’t a new turn of phrase or interesting idiom. This is, generally, a case of the speaker having heard an expression, not clearly, and starting to use it without thinking about what it means. This is how we’ve gotten such gems as “for all intensive purposes,” “nip it in the butt,” and “it’s a mute point” (or similar). In this case, the speaker meant to convey that they care so little about the point of discussion, that they essentially care not at all, but it’s not what they said.
So, if I understand the person’s meaning, why do I insist on the correction? It’s twofold: first off, I’m partly being helpful. Most people I know don’t like to say words or use phrases incorrectly. Like me, they would prefer to be corrected on their use of language than to go along continually making a verbal blunder. A number of times when I’ve helped someone out in this way their response has been “Why has no one told me this before? I’ve been saying it wrong for years!” I’ve felt the same way on a number of words that I’ve mangled.
The second part is, perhaps, a little more selfish. As Munroe’s character says, language is glorious chaos, elaborating “Every choice of phrasing and spelling and tone and timing carries countless signals and contexts and subtexts and more…” I completely agree, but I reach a different conclusion. While it’s true that you can never be certain what your words will mean to the listener, that just establishes the need to strive for clarity. Your words mean so much and are so prone to misinterpretation that it is essential they depart your mouth meeting a minimum threshold of logic.
When I inform someone they’re using this phrase incorrectly, their reaction is what matters. If they don’t seem to care, it tells me something about how they view language and the degree of importance they attach to clear communication. A person who knowingly uses a phrase incorrectly, to the point of essentially saying the opposite of what they mean, is someone I have to be a little more careful with. It warns me they are at a higher risk of not saying what they mean. I have to think about my interactions with them more holistically, watch their body language closely, and be ready to ask more clarifying questions when we talk. Sure, this is something we should all do, all the time, but there are degrees of attentiveness to these actions, and people who don’t attach much importance to clarity demand more from my cognitive resources than others.
Rarely, I’ll discover people who choose to use phrases like this incorrectly on purpose, just to annoy people like me. They’re a whole different group to consider, but being aware of their motives is helpful as well.
The words you start with are the purest moment in a conversation; after they leave your mouth there’s a bazillion ways it can go wrong. Munroe’s protagonist seems to agree, saying “All you can do is try to get better at guessing how your words affect people, so you can have a chance of finding the ones that will make them feel something like you want them to feel.” However, the comic left me with the message that the onus is on the receiver to politely decline to correct the speaker, unless they only have that person’s best interests at heart. I disagree. I expect better from my friends; I’m unwilling to cater to complacency, laziness, or ignorance; and I need to know the attitude of my conversational partner with respect to language in order to better understand our interaction. I don’t think that makes me a jerk.
If you’ve read to the end of this article, there’s a good chance you could care less about language. A number of you could care a very large amount less. GeekDad is a site that attracts more than its fair share of word nerds, certainly, and I realize that in even broaching this subject that I’ve opened my article, perhaps all my articles, to critique. I want to make it clear that I’m not claiming to be even close to perfect. I have a lot to learn about language and writing, and I make mistakes in every one of my articles. Even having pointed that out I realize that the comments section might fill up with examples of mistakes I’ve made. If that does happen, I’ll probably be OK with it.
In fact, I think I couldn’t care less.
I’m with you on this. As someone trained in and interested in the sciences, language is very important for transmitting ideas. Sloppy language just means that ideas are poorly transmitted. I’ve had people tell me that as long as you know what the other person is trying to convey, it’s doesn’t matter if they use the wrong word. This was in response to me complaining about an email where the author was telling us to “be conscience of strangers in the building”.
Yes, I knew what was trying to be implied. But excusing bad grammar just leads even worse grammar. Perhaps it’s how we get even more sloppy writing such as a recent newspaper article about a local university researcher that developed a new type of foam that “increases when stretched”. That phrase was used multiple times in the article. I’m sure it made perfect sense to the reporter, but I have no idea which property of the foam it is that’s increasing.
I’ve not been on GeekDad long, but this may be the best piece I’ve read here…and there are ever-so-many good ones. My father taught High School English early in his career, and I was raised by that man who cared very much about making certain that his words conveyed precisely the meaning he intended, no matter the context.
I’ve been in exactly the position we’re discussing, and that uncomfortably often. I’m a mathematician and statistician by vocation, but I’m used by an untenably-large number of folks as their word-smith for presentations because they appreciate my command of the language, and its ability to impart concise, precise, and tailored messages targeted to specific messages or audiences.
Now, if only we could do something about folks who leave out the Oxford comma, or those who talk with great passion about the “nook-you-lar” industry ;-).
Personally, I am somewhere in between.
I highly value appropriate language. I get annoyed by people using a phrase improperly because they have only heard, never seen, the phrase, and they heard it wrong.
However…. there are points about that in general, and about this phrasing in particular:
1) The general point
If the person has never SEEN the phrase, and only heard it… then it is not particularly a fault of that person. MANY common phrases make no bloody sense when stated properly. You can chase down the rabbit hole on many of them, and eventually find where they did once make sense. But what is important now is the context, and cultural meaning. NOT the literal meaning.
So, in this sense I do not fault people for saying things wrong. They heard it wrong due either to a fault in their own hearing capability, or the speaking ability of the other person(s) they have heard the statement from (either thick accents, quick speech or low volumes typically lead toward the mangled results).
After all, our language is nothing more than a generational game of telephone.
2) The point specifically about this phrase
For me, the problem with “I could care less” is not improper specific words, but a loss of emphasis on COULD. When you stress this word, it adds the additional implication of “I COULD care less…. [but only barely]” Meaning that you do to some minor degree care enough to acknowledge a thing, but you do NOT care enough to do anything about it.
The phrase considered more appropriate in this article and by similar people of “I couldn’t care less” seems like a waste to me, as if you honestly cannot care less, the proper statement ought to be IDGAF. Or to remain PG “I don’t care”
Sure… it is more polite to say you cannot care less than to say you simply do not care at all. But since I have a naturally inquisitive mind and am open to basically anything, I have never encountered a case where i honestly do not care. Instead, there are cases where I do care, but that thing is not my current priority, so I barely care (and hence will currently ignore it)
I understand you feel your position on this matter does not make you a jerk. I humbly disagree.
To respond with another XKCD (the most appropriate way in which to engage in any XKCD debate):
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/communication.png
When you are faulting someone for failing to communicate what they meant because they used one phrase improperly… which of the two cases do you think you are?
Could have been summed up simply: “I like when satirical commentary is made on things until it becomes commentary on things I do/like.”
I say “I could care less” deliberately. And yes, I do write and draw a feature here called “Word Nerd” where I nitpick language usage. I shall explain.
I use “I could care less” sarcastically, as in “well, I COULD care, less, but I already care so little that it’s functionally indistinguishable from not caring at all. But it’s possible that I could care even less. Shall I give it a try?”
This is what I always thought was meant by the supposedly incorrect expression, that it’s supposed to be sarcastic.
I perceive “I could care less,” the same way as jimmaq does: “I suppose I COULD care less, but I’d have to make a serious effort to do so.” I use “I could care less” in situations in which I can theoretically imagine a case in which I cared at least a little bit, and “I couldn’t care less” in situations in which I can’t.
But, in practice, they’re all but interchangeable. If I hear someone say “I could care less”, I hear them as saying that the amount which they care is very, very small — and communication happens unimpeded.
TL;DR= “Language changes and evolves, except when it changes in a way that I don’t like or I disagree with, then I show my biases and privilage by insisting that there’s only one proper way to communicate, based on relatively arbitrary rules compiled by a bunch of rich old white guys who were specifically calling out the way the upper class was better than then lower classes.”
As someone who works professionally in linguistics, this post is just silly. Linguistics as a science doesn’t support it at all.
Let’s start off with the basics: if an utterance communicates the ideas properly to the listener(s), communication has occurred correctly. That’s it. Everything beyond that is nuance.
Next, language is not logic. Things like the logical delineation between ‘could’ and ‘could not’ cannot be analyzed in the same way a logical statement – there are levels of communication and context that the use of the word in any particular sentence that a basic definition of capability and/or potential simply does not embody. There is more to an utterance than it’s formal logical interpretation. This is why things like the obsession with double negative are such vacuous topics. There are languages where a double negative is required grammatically, and it does the double negative does not ‘cancel itself out’ like it does in English. And they’ve been communicating just fine for hundreds of years.
Additionally, language _does_ change, on multiple levels all the same time. Sometimes the way sounds work together changes. Sometimes the way words work together changes. Sometime the meaning changes. Sometimes, all three happen at once, and in different directions simultaneously.
Idioms for because the phrase takes on a meaning that is different than the sum of its constituent words, and from that point they evolve just like a single word does. And that means if the sounds change, then the constituent words can become reanalyzed because it’s the meaning of the idiom as a whole that is primary. Sometimes that includes substitutions of words like in “nipped in the butt”. Sometimes that involves situations where new words are created, like how we got the verb ‘resurrect’: resurrection was the original word, but since is was shaped like other words that ended with -tion that came from verbs, we created a verb to fit in.
This is how is how language works. It’s a reality of human life as much as the fact that hemoglobin carries oxygen in the blood. By insisting that it is ‘just wrong’, you aren’t acting from a place of academic knowledge, but from a place of linguistic ignorance. You _aren’t_ countering complacency or laziness. You are denying the reality of the world as much as someone who insists climate change isn’t happening.
What you are communicating in that situation is a statement of culture baggage. It’s an assertion of social superiority because it is about the assertion that a style (a particular cultural artifact) signals that someone is better/smarter/more educated/the right sort of people.
If you truly value clear communication and language, then you need to spend some time about how communication and language actually work. Sure you use it all of the time, and you may be good at using it. But that doesn’t mean you understand it, any more than an athlete necessarily understands what is actually happening in their muscles and blood.
Heh, reading over my post, I see some editing errors in my post. We’ll see how many people point them out as refutation of my point. And yet, I’m betting you could still understand it.
I’m so happy to read this! I often feel that the general misuse of language these days leads to all kinds of miscommunications. It’s one thing when someone says something out loud, however, with more and more people communicating through Facebook, email, and other electronic sources, a LOT gets lost in the interpretation (see what I did there?). Something that bothers me a lot is when folks who misuse language, and are subsequently corrected as you describe here, often pull out the “oh you think you’re so smart, you think you’re better than me” defence. We all went to school, and the majority of us even made it through high school. To infer that a lack of education is behind language misuse, at least in Canada, is preposterous. For the most part, everyone here has access to equal education. We all got to go to school, man! So when some of us care about communicating clearly, and others do not, it’s not a question of who has a better education. It’s about caring enough to be clear. Just as one example, as a Mom of three kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder, I can tell you that if you want to get your point across to EVERYONE you speak to, it’s best to stick to the language we’re taught, not bizarre interpretations thereof. There is no room for abstract in the world of folks who are, or have, autistic traits. Everything is taken literally. With the growing number of incredibly talented autistic individuals in the business place, it’s something we should care about. In the real world, this kind of haphazard communication just doesn’t fly. There’s something to be said for clarity. Just thought I’d nip this one in the butt. 😛