Then it occurred to me that if Objectivity still had a lowercase sense unaffected by modern relativism, maybe Authority did as well. So, just as I’d done w/r/t Garner’s use of judgment, I went to my trusty conservative American Heritage Dictionary and looked up authority.
Does any of this make sense? Because this was how I discovered that Bryan Garner is a genius.
WHY BRYAN A. GARNER IS A GENIUS (II)
Bryan Garner is a genius because A Dictionary of Modern American Usage just about completely resolves the Usage Wars’ problem of Authority. The book’s solution is both semantic and rhetorical. Garner manages to collapse the definitions of certain key terms and to control the compresence of rhetorical Appeals so cleverly that he is able to transcend both Usage Wars camps and simply tell the truth, and to tell the truth in a way that does not torpedo his own credibility but actually enhances it. His argumentative strategy is totally brilliant and totally sneaky, and part of both qualities is that it usually doesn’t seem like there’s even an argument going on at all.
WHY BRYAN A. GARNER IS A GENIUS (III)
Rhetorically, traditional Prescriptivists depend almost entirely on the Logical Appeal. One reason they are such inviting targets for liberal scorn is their arrogance, and their arrogance is based on their utter disdain for considerations of persona or persuasion. This is not an exaggeration. Doctrinaire Prescriptivists conceive of themselves not as advocates of correct English but as avatars of it. The truth of what they prescribe is itself their “authority” for prescribing it; and because they hold the truth of these prescriptions to be self-evident, they regard those Americans who reject or ignore the prescriptions as “ignoramuses” who are pretty much beneath notice except as evidence for the general deterioration of US culture.
Since the only true audience for it is the Prescriptivists themselves, it really doesn’t matter that their argument is almost Euthyphrotically circular—“It’s the truth because we say so, and we say so because it’s the truth.” This is dogmatism of a purity you don’t often see in this country, and it’s no accident that hard-core Prescriptivists are just a tiny fringe-type element of today’s culture. The American Conversation is an argument, after all, and way worse than our fear of error or anarchy or Gomorrahl decadence is our fear of theocracy or autocracy or any ideology whose project is not to argue or persuade but to adjourn the whole debate sine die. 76
The hard-line Descriptivists, for all their calm scientism and avowed preference for fact over value, rely mostly on rhetorical pathos, the visceral emotional Appeal. As mentioned, the relevant emotions here are Sixtiesish in origin and leftist in temperament — an antipathy for conventional Authority and elitist put-downs and uptight restrictions and casuistries and androcaucasian bias and snobbery and overt smugness of any sort … i.e., for the very attitudes embodied in the prim glare of the grammarian and the languid honk of Buckley-type elites, which happen to be the two most visible species of SNOOT still around. Whether Methodological or Philosophical or pseudo-progressive, Descriptivists are, all and essentially, demagogues; and dogmatic Prescriptivists are actually their most valuable asset, since Americans’ visceral distaste for dogmatism and elitist fatuity gives Descriptivism a ready audience for its Pathetic Appeal.
What the Descriptivists haven’t got is logic. The Dictionary can’t sanction everything, and the very possibility of language depends on rules and conventions, and Descriptivism offers no logos for determining which rules and conventions are useful and which are pointless/oppressive, nor any arguments for how and by whom such determinations are to be made. In short, the Descriptivists don’t have any kind of Appeal that’s going to persuade anyone who doesn’t already have an EAT THE RICH-type hatred of Authority per se. Homiletically speaking, the only difference between the Prescriptivists and the Descriptivists is that the latter’s got a bigger choir.
Mr. Bryan A. Garner recognizes something that neither of these camps appears to get: given 40 years of the Usage Wars, “authority” is no longer something a lexicographer can just presume ex officio. In fact, a large part of the project of any contemporary usage dictionary will consist in establishing this authority. If that seems rather obvious, be apprised that nobody before Garner seems to have figured it out — that the lexicographer’s challenge now is to be not just accurate and comprehensive but credible. That in the absence of unquestioned, capital-A Authority in language, the reader must now be moved or persuaded to grant a dictionary its authority, freely and for what appear to be good reasons.
Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage is thus both a collection of information and a piece of Democratic 77 rhetoric. Its primary Appeal is Ethical, and its goal is to recast the Prescriptivist’s persona: the author presents himself not as a cop or a judge but as more like a doctor or lawyer. This is an ingenious tactic. In the same sort of move we can see him make w/r/t judgment and objective, Garner here alters the relevant AHD definitions of authority from (1) “The right and power to command, enforce laws, exact obedience, determine, or judge” / “A person or group invested with this power” to (2) “Power to influence or persuade resulting from knowledge or experience” / “An accepted source of expert information or advice.” ADMAU’s Garner, in other words, casts himself as an authority not in an autocratic sense but in a technocratic sense. And the technocrat is not only a thoroughly modern and palatable image of authority but also immune to the charges of elitism/classism that have hobbled traditional Prescriptivism. After all, do we call a doctor or lawyer “elitist” when he presumes to tell us what we should eat or how we should do our taxes?
Of course, Garner really is a technocrat. He’s an attorney, recall, and in ADMAU he cultivates just the sort of persona good jurists project: knowledgeable, reasonable, dispassionate, fair. His judgments about usage tend to be rendered like legal opinions — exhaustive citation of precedent (other dictionaries’ judgments, published examples of actual usage) combined with clear, logical reasoning that’s always informed by the larger consensual purposes SWE is meant to serve.
Also technocratic is Garner’s approach to the whole issue of whether anybody’s even going to be interested in his 700 pages of fine-pointed counsel. Like any mature specialist, he simply assumes that there are good practical reasons why some people choose to concern themselves with his area of expertise; and his attitude about the fact that most Americans “could care less” about SWE usage isn’t scorn or disapproval but the phlegmatic resignation of a professional who realizes that he can give good advice but can’t make you take it: