Teacher: Simmer down, Hermione. Are you talking to me or to that straw man you've constructed? I, and the rest of our present company would have understood that you wanted to borrow a pencil if you had pointed at it and grunted, but I think we can all agree that would hardly be appropriate for this setting.
I know you're in a rush to establish yourself as the smartest person in the room, but perhaps you should have paused to ask yourself if addressing an instructor in an academic setting was the appropriate context to use informal phrasing, particularly when you had reason to believe that this instructor would be inclined to correct you. Usage is dependent on context, and as the author of the original post identified me as "Teacher" for this tiresome bit of Kabuki, it would be irresponsible not to correct you.
If you still need additional reasons, think of it as being comparable to splitting an infinitive or ending a sentence with a preposition. They are not, strictly speaking, prohibited, but they sound like shit and mark you as a buffoon. Amateur sophistry is not going to win you any friends.
No, you can not borrow a pencil, smartass.
Student's reply: Fuck you, bitch. Shit-brained snarky "teachers" like you are the reason I hate school. DIE HUMAN FILTH.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I hated school, mostly because of snotty teachers like that. (The "Die Human Filth" thing is from Spinrad's LORDS OF THE SWASTIKA.)
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of surprised by that. I haven't read your non-fiction books, but your fiction always struck me as rather precise, in that you always seemed to have used the best word for the situation.
DeleteMy takeaway from the exchange is not that "can" is an invalid choice, but that "may" is a *better* one, in that it's part of a request directed at a social superior in a somewhat formal setting.
Seeing as the student clearly knew the difference and was almost certainly being deliberately provocative by asking the question in such a way in order to elicit the "I don't know. Can you?" response, so as then to have an excuse to to reply with a condescending lecture that had likely been rehearsed in front of a mirror, I find my sympathies lie with the teacher.
Hey, I try to be just as precise in my nonfiction, honest. I just had some lousy teachers when I was a kid. Put me off the whole "formal education" thing. Autodidact is where it's at!
ReplyDeleteAutodidactic always struck me as such a Zelaznian word, probably because I read it for the first time in in IF AT FAUST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, where Faust describes himself as a autodidactic thaumaturge. My eight-year-old came across it (autodidact, not FAUST), and managed to puzzle out the meaning from context.
DeleteIncidentally, this is complete bullshit: "... think of it as being comparable to splitting an infinitive or ending a sentence with a preposition. They are not, strictly speaking, prohibited, but they sound like shit and mark you as a buffoon. Amateur sophistry is not going to win you any friends." They do NOT sound like shit -- they sound completely natural, which is why they're so common. Adhering to rules like that marks you as a stilted pompous pedant, and is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.
ReplyDeleteI see what you did there.
DeleteI still say "Who did you give it to?" sounds like garbage, and I have chosen this as my hill to die on.
Delete...
On which to die.
If you'd written "UPON which to die.", the fit would really hit the shan. I hate "upon" -- only earnest undergrads and limp-wristed poets use that word. (Zelazny gets a pass here because he was Zelazny.)
DeleteAnd in a total non sequitur -- if you haven't watched Orphan Black, get on it NOW. Amazing stuff.
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