Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. posted on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 08:34:43 -0500 as
excerpted:
> In <20100812080418.0c7504ad@scorpio>, Jerry wrote:
>>irregardless
>
> I saw this "word" and your post immediately made no sense to me.
>
> irrespective = ir- + respective = not respective (compare:
> irresponsible) regardless = regard + -less = without regard (compare:
> heartless, boundless)
>
> irregardless = ir- + regard + -less = not without regard ?!
While the double-negative effect grates on me as well, to the point I too
find it extremely distractive and disruptive, there's an "irregardless"
entry (tho noting that it's non-standard) in both wikipedia and wictionary.
The wikipedia entry mentions the debate between prescriptivists and
descriptivists, and it's only fair to note in discussion of such common
but non-standard words that there /is/ such a debate. Further, while the
prescriptivists will call all usage (with the possible exception of
deliberate portrayal of the uneducated) incorrect, the descriptivists will
point to usage statistics (simple number of google hits on the term, when
contrasted with alternative terms, is a common one available to all those
with a working Internet connection almost instantly) in support of a
conclusion that it's reasonably accepted in actual usage, regardless of
/what/ the rules say.
That said, even the descriptivists will note the controversy, stating that
people should be aware of the issue and choose their words accordingly.
In this particular case, because it /is/ a double-negative, a feature
"with English language support that's incomplete at best" as I once saw
one programmer describe it, the disruption potential is even higher than
the usual "non-standard" word case, as it'll very close to force the
reader to stop, go back, and reparse to try to figure things out. Given
that fact and the fact that such disruption is seldom the desired effect,
regardless of which position a potential user takes on the legitimacy of
the word itself, most potential users aware of the issue will therefore
choose an alternative (regardless, as I use in this post, or irrespective)
less likely to be disruptive to the message they're attempting to convey.
Of course, some may still deliberately choose to use it, either to portray
the uneducated as mentioned above, or to raise the visibility of the
issue, in the latter case likely providing a footnote to the effect that
they're aware of the issue and chose to use the word anyway.
Such usage-with-footnoting is what I'll often do with the phrase "begs the
question", for example, as I take a literal interpretation of the
individual words, that it does in fact beg that the question be asked.
It's thus worthwhile to observe that the usage in question here neither
appeared to be deliberate portrayal of the uneducated, nor was it
footnoted. As such, it was "begging the explanation" followup posts, even
if usage /was/ deliberate. (If deliberate usage without the footnote
occurred to call attention to the issue, counting on just such a reaction
and in fact deliberately provoking it, as more effective than a footnote
would be, well played indeed! But it's a risky strategy as one can never
be sure it /will/ provoke such a reaction.)
So a link to especially the wikipedia article on the subject would have
been helpful (and follows), while simply calling it incorrect usage takes
a clear prescriptivists viewpoint without so much as even mentioning the
other viewpoint, or explaining why it's an undesirable choice in most
contexts even for those who disagree with the prescriptivist position.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregardless
(That in turn links wictionary, if you're interested in its take on the
word.)
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
___________________________________________________
This message is from the kde mailing list.
Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde.
Archives: http://lists.kde.org/.
More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
