Linguistic aversion therapy?
Language Log 2022-10-07
Rick Rubenstein commented on yesterday's post ("What happened to all the, like, prescriptivists?"):
Are there any proven therapies available for folks like me who, despite seeing the light decades ago, can't keep from wincing at "violations" of prescriptivist rules ingrained (mostly self-ingrained) during childhood? I want to be totally unfazed by "The team with the bigger amount of people has an advantage," but man, it's hard. (Not actually serious, but it's certainly true. Unlearning is tough.)
The short answer is "I don't know". But see below for some obvious ideas, which amount to "analyze the situation" and "get used to it".
Reactions like Rick's are common. When I was six or so, one of my friends habitually used real as an adverbial intensifier, as in "a real big fish" or "real hot today". And "wincing" is a good description of how I reacted. I never said anything, because he was my friend, and eventually I got used to it, to the point of saying such things myself in casual conversation. (And I remember being puzzled that this usage bothered me so much, when I had no such reaction to the much more different speech patterns of one of our other friends, whose native language was Spanish.)
This seems somewhat similar to the situation of would-be EMTs and other medical personnel, who need to overcome their natural reactions to blood, vomit, etc., as discussed in this Q&A:
I had to smile as I read your post because it reminded me of my own entry into healthcare and that of my classmates. Every one of us had “a thing”. “A thing” is that something (or several somethings) that made us squeamish. Each one of us had one, or even two or three. And, each one of us made it through school and into our profession.
Don’t let this stop you from following your passion. We all have been there, and we all made it. You can too.
Here is something that helped me. I don't know if you will find it useful, but it might be worth a try:
When you see “that thing” that is hard for you to handle, try not to back off. Instead, lean in, look at it, analyze it, study it, objectify it. Let yourself feel whatever it is you feel, but intellectualize your experience. Think about what it is, what it means, what your instructors and senior partners teach you about it. Notice your breathing: adjust your breathing to be slow and deep. Inhale, pause. Exhale, pause, and so on. This is a kind of home-brewed aversion conditioning and, counterintuitive as it seems, the more you do it, the less emotional impact you will experience.
Of course there are differences — there's nothing intrinsically aversive about "wrong" usages or pronunciations, and sociolinguistic wincing is physiologically different from the reactions whose most extreme forms are fainting or vomiting.
I've been assigning a relevant exercise in ling001 for many years. Here's part of the description:
Write a short essay on some "rule of grammar" that you feel strongly about.You can choose a case where you've been taught that the way you naturally speak or write is wrong, but you don't believe there is a problem, or even find that the allegedly correct form is strange or artificial. For example, some people feel this way about saying "it is I" rather than "it's me"
If you prefer, you can take the prescriptive side: specify a grammatical principle that you (believe that) you follow in your own speech and writing, and whose violation sounds wrong to you in the speech or writing of others. Some people feel this way about the conflation of imply and infer, or the use of real as an adverb ("that's a real bad idea"). Some people even feel this way about the use of can in this and the previous paragraph, to indicate permission rather than ability.
Whichever side you take, try to be precise both about the linguistic structures involved, about the facts of the case (historical and current patterns of usage), and about your feelings. In other words, be sure that your essay answers these three questions:
1. What exactly is the linguistic principle at issue?
2. How have writers and speakers historically behaved with respect to this issue? How do they behave now? Don't just give your impressions — try to find out the facts.
3. If a usage annoys you — whether it is prescriptively correct or incorrect — is it genuinely mistaken, incoherent or degraded, or is it just different from what you expect, or perhaps associated with people that you don't like? On the other hand, if you prefer a usage that you have been told is wrong, do you feel guilty about it, like indulging in a bad habit? Or do you feel that you are justified in resisting an unreasonable rule?
Aspects of this situation are also similar to the issues identified and treated by implicit association tests and unconscious bias training, though again there are fundamental differences. And there are overlaps with OCD contamination fears.
Finally, it's worth noting that we have more-or-less aversive reactions to language that seems contextually inappropriate for many reasons. It might be a word that (we think) is misused or overused, a pronunciation or morphosyntactic form that (we think) is wrong, an accent that (we think) is associated with people we dislike, a stylistic choice that (we think) is inappropriate in the context, and so on.
These reactions are natural and unavoidable. Over the decades, linguists have tried to convince people that such reactions are sometimes based on false ideas about actual patterns of usage, and are sometimes associated with class, ethnic, gender, or age prejudices — and therefore should always be analyzed rather than indulged.
But as Rick noted, mere analytic understanding doesn't always cancel the wince. Are there effective anti-wince therapies? I don't think that linguists have added anything to what the psychologists have developed for dealing with reactions that are irrational, exaggerated, or otherwise problematic.