E-Prime

SDragon · July 03, 2006, 06:41:38 PM

dont know much about it other then whats said in this thread, but i already know i dont like it. anything that minipulates speech, no matter what the reason, isnt good, as far as im concerned.

obviously, subtle changes in the wording can have severe impact on the message itself, and between education and years of practice, most of us are fairly adept at choosing the right words, and wordings. the words and wordings we choose fit the message we try to portray, to the best of our abilities. when something changes the wordings, the message is either changed, or lost completely.

brainface · July 03, 2006, 07:26:05 PM

Ehhh? What's wrong with manipulating your own speech? I can see the problem with trying to unduly influence the speech of others, but I don't see how trying to follow e-prime for clarity in your own writing is somehow more insiduous than, say, following the guidelines in Strunk's Elements of Style.

SDragon · July 03, 2006, 07:33:22 PM

....

i just made a total fool of myself by talking about something i know nothing about, didnt i?

just so were clear on this- what, exactly, is e-prime?

CYMRO · July 03, 2006, 07:40:26 PM

Quote from: brainfaceEhhh? What's wrong with manipulating your own speech? I can see the problem with trying to unduly influence the speech of others, but I don't see how trying to follow e-prime for clarity in your own writing is somehow more insiduous than, say, following the guidelines in Strunk's Elements of Style.

There is nothing wrong with manipulating your own speech, if that is what blows your skirt up. But to try to impose such artificial limitations on everyone else is just linguistic fascism.

And, again, I reiterate, clarity is missing from e-prime. While one may argue that it helps the odd scientist or politician to waffle, it just ain't conducive to real communication.

Hello, my name is John.
Hello, my parents named me John.

How is the second sentence more clear than the first?

CYMRO · July 03, 2006, 07:42:47 PM

Quote from: sdragon1984, newly found god....

i just made a total fool of myself by talking about something i know nothing about, didnt i?

just so were clear on this- what, exactly, is e-prime?

A version of English that seeks to avoid the verb "to be".

There is a link in one of brainface's posts in the Typos thread.

brainface · July 03, 2006, 08:05:40 PM

QuoteBut to try to impose such artificial limitations on everyone else is just linguistic fascism.

And, again, I reiterate, clarity is missing from e-prime. While one may argue that it helps the odd scientist or politician to waffle, it just ain't conducive to real communication.

Hello, my name is John.
Hello, my parents named me John.

How is the second sentence more clear than the first?
[/quote]actually[/i] possess a birth certificate reading "Jon".

"Call me Jon" seems best, to me, when primed.

I don't think using e-prime for simple phrases, particularly near ritual phrases, increases clarity at all: My name is Mike, How's it going, etc. I do think it works when describing actions and observations.

CYMRO · July 03, 2006, 08:24:56 PM

What I find disturbing is the reference in the article to "semantic hygiene". As if those proponents of e-prime have a superior grasp on the language compared to Shakespeare or Chaucer.
Where would Hamlet be without the Great Infinitive?

http://www.nobeliefs.com/eprime.htm

SDragon · July 03, 2006, 10:02:59 PM

after reading that link, i still stand by my statement, as far as e-prime being enforced upon others.

on top of that, id like to add that the whole thing seems moronic, since any statement is automatically subjective. rephrasing a statement to be overtly subjective is only redundant. example 8, on beethovan and mozart, is a perfect example of this. given the subject, the only difference in the two statements is that one is considerabley more complex, whereas the message remains the same. in that case (and in many of the cases presented), why should one bother?

on the other end of the spectrum, however, there is the man his parents named jon. in regular-speak, his name is bobby. he became a huge jazz fan and decided he liked the phrase "bobbalooey" so much that he had his name legally changed to robert louis, or bobby louie. in this case, e-prime ruined the original message, which is the identifying espression for the man.

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