Wordie: Maven: Comments

Comment by seanahan, 2 months ago

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:52:14 +0000

My experience with linguists is that they generally speak in a derogatory manner about prescriptivists. Language is constantly evolving, difficult to predict, and often difficult to understand. My understanding of the chapter in The Language Instinct is that he is directly criticizing prescriptivism in general, with the Mavens as the focal point of his derision.

Comment by sionnach, 2 months ago

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:48:12 +0000

Pinker's use of the term is, in my view, unnecessarily dismissive, and somewhat polemic. In what I think of as a kind of "smear 'n sneer" attack, he paints all language mavens as rabid, reactionary prescriptivists, not to be taken seriously. Though I admire Pinker, and enjoy his writing on language, he does have a tendency to present the position of those who disagree with him in an exaggeratedly negative light. Because Pinker is hyper-articulate and writes with considerable wit, his distortions can be remarkably persuasive. But the reader should take care not to mistake amusing verbal pyrotechnics for reasoned argument.

In his book "The Tipping Point", Malcolm Gladwell made frequent use of the term maven, but in the context of Gladwell's book, it had generally positive connotations.

Comment by seanahan, 2 months ago

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 02:28:10 +0000

Steven Pinker uses the term "The Language Mavens" to describe to newspaper columnists who declare themselves experts on language and stalwarts against change.

Comment by Widget, 2 months ago

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:53:30 +0000

A Yiddish word derived from the Hebrew מבין - one who understands