The Snobbery Of Credentialed Ignorance

HAVING BEEN TROLLED several times recently on the allegation that I've failed to write in "vernacular English" and -as you no doubt have guessed -  Simps having not taken up my advice to look up the actual meaning of the word, I figured I'd have a little fun with that feature of current vernacular English among the college-credentialed and consider why that particular phrase is so generally misused and why its misuse is a good example of what the problem with vernacular English can be if something like accuracy is your goal.

The dictionary use of the word as an adjective, according to Merriam Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the 1977 edition that I have on hand defines it

1 vernacular 1a: using a language or dialect native to a region or country rather than a literary, cultured or foreign language b: of, relating to, or being a nonstandard or substandard language or dialect of a place, region, or country c: of, relating to, or being the normal spoken form of a language.
2: applied to a plant or animal in the common native speech as distinguished from the Latin nomenclature of scientific classification 3: of, relating to, or characteristic of a period, place or group; esp. of, relating to or being the common building style of a period or place.

My guess would be that easily nine out of ten times you'll hear the phrase "vernacular English" the adjective doesn't mean any of those meanings.  It's commonly used among the ignorant as a general signifier of virtue in the way that someone talks or writes when that's not the meaning of the word at all.  As I said to the Simp who acts as my tireless meter maid of language (he's got a rather sick fantasy life), there's no law that says you have to write in the vernacular and that there's no virtue in it unless you're trying to imitate vernacular speech.  I do, at times, do that but it's not the way I typically write seeing no virtue in it when vernacular English doesn't fit the topic or what I need to say about it.  

What's really funny about the current misuse of the term is that it copies the kind of language snobbery that I've got a feeling the phrase "vernacular English" would have expressed c. 1914 when used by the kind of People who knew what the adjective meant.  Only it wasn't considered a compliment to vernacular English users. 

What's so funny about using the vernacular as if it is some kind of sign of virtue in language use is that, as the way "vernacular English" is generally used, what it proves is that the user hasn't got more than a vague notion of what the adjective means.  It's a sign of what the 18th-19th century British radical William Cobbett said about giving out educational credentials to those who aren't really educated, it produces little more than snobbery, that is when it doesn't produce a snob who's too proud and vain to do anything that's actually productive.  There was a lot of that in the boom times for colleges in the early post-WWII period when they put too many people unprepared for college through it to get the money from they paying customers and didn't ask much of them.  I don't see much evidence that things are any better now when the price of a college education, or, in too many cases, credentialing is absurdly high.  It's come with an insane level of demanding college-credentials for way too many jobs that a. don't need that and b. the pay for which doesn't justify the expense and life-long debt of getting a rag with your name on it.  Among the most obvious of those is the idiotic "press" these days, filled with pretentious idiots and liars and dolts.  The kind of dolts who will hear someone say "that's hardly 'vernacular English'" and only take that it's a put down so "vernacular English" must be better than whatever's being put down.  There's nothing wrong with vernacular English at times but there's nothing wrong with other modes of speaking and writing English at other times.  It depends on what you're saying and what's a more effective way to say it.   And how you friggin' want to say it. 

Since those in control of the U. S. media are just such over-credentialed dolts who don't do much reading apart from fiction and gossipy scandal - and most of them only really watched the movie or show - an idiot can get away with that level of misuse of the language for an entire career without anyone much noticing.  Eventually that distorted use might become standard and find its way into a good dictionary but that's not what the word means now.  Alas, then we'll need a word to mean what it does now if you want that meaning to be clear.