Today, Salon.com writer Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote an essay cleverly punned “The Audacity of Hopefully,” which angrily decries the A.P. Stylebook’s decision to add the word “hopefully.” As she points out, “hopefully” is an adverb, and using it to say things like “Hopefully, my future child will be a boy” is incorrect, unless we mean it in the sense that this future boy would always go about his “being a boy” in a hopeful manner. To writers like Mary Elizabeth Williams, I urge you to ask yourself some questions before making writers look like total bored tyrants.
1. Can this misuse be an example of the natural way that language changes over time?
Many aspects of language are born out of what prescriptive linguists call “corruption.” Misuse by the common people is how many words and phrases get their meaning. This can even extend to types of words. People who study language know that the line between adjectives and adverbs is breaking down in English. We don’t not feel well. We don’t feel good. I don’t do something real quickly, I do it real quick. Order has not broken down in the universe.
2. Can this misuse actually be a placeholder for something that grammar holds imperfect answers for?
In the case of hopefully, we’re describing unknown, future circumstances. In many languages, nonsensical grammatical particles slip in to be a placeholder when talking about the vague, murkiness of space and time. Think about “it is raining.” What is raining? “There might be a storm.” Where? Here? Certain things require a lot of thought before they can be definitively labeled nonsense. Maybe people who say hopefully mean that fate will act in a way that is full of hope. After all, isn’t it usually used when the agent of the sentence is the elusive “it will” or “there will be?”
3. Is the misuse a result of the word being appropriated and changed by a counter-culture?
One misuse of language that particularly rankles me is when people spell “psych” as “sike” or “syke.” A bad punchline of a joke is extra tacky if it’s spelled wrong. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt dumb and out-of-touch. Changing the spelling of “psych” is something that differentiates it from its stodgier Greek roots and medicinal context, and makes it specific to that particular use. Not to mention easier to spell. Is that so wrong? There are many parts of society that exist away from the part that enforces standard English, and they freely change language to be simpler to learn and to express their identities. We have to accept this as not only inevitable, but useful.
4. Is there something better I could be doing with my gift for grammar than correcting people?
Yes. Go learn another language.
Leave a Reply