Irregardless: How some words that aren’t words are
English is Changing, Irregardless?
Idries Shah retells an ancient Sufi teaching story in which a dervish passes a dry well and hears a call for help. He finds that a man, a grammarian, has fallen into the well and is crying out for help: “[...] ‘Hold, friend, and I’ll fetch a ladder and rope,’ said the dervish. ‘One moment, please!’ said the grammarian, ‘Your grammar and diction are faulty; be good enough to amend them.’ ‘If that is so much more important than the essentials,’ shouted the dervish, ‘you had best stay where you are until I have learned to speak properly” (193). What we find in the story is a complete contradiction of sense. In other words, if our grammarian is genuinely in trouble, he should take the first hand offered him, which he seems reluctant to do. Likewise, if the dervish is genuinely a man of compassion, as it might seem, why does he appear to ignore a call for help based on some illegible offense? We may take this opportunity to investigate the fascinating process of change in a language – if we are careful. We must be careful not to fall into the well ourselves, refusing new ideas when they are offered, insisting that we know the right. And we must be careful not to turn our backs on those, by the same token, who are in need of some assistance—whether we find the prospect appealing or not. So – who needs help – the grammarian, the dervish, or both?
In order to illuminate a gradual sequence of events by which changes in a language occur, we should constructively examine specific instances of infringement upon the laws which govern that language. For the purposes of this work, we shall look at the modern English word, “Irregardless.” Of course, we should immediately note that, like many other words in wide use today, this “word” is frequently presumed no word at all. And yet “irregardless” remains in widespread regional and dialectical use. If we find that the driving force in changing a language, our English language, exists alongside increased social acceptance of the infringements upon grammar, what must this signify? Truly, language – any language – must be on the verge of both constant growth and annihilation. What word, or idiom, then, is not in a state of perpetual change? Irregardless must either be on the brink of unreserved disqualification from the lexicon – or wholehearted acceptance. Indeed, a close examination of the use of “irregardless” as an English word reveals the very process by which a language evolves. As we shall see, our odd little word does in fact exist, irregardless.
One among many signs that a law is in fundamental dispute is the frequency with which it is invoked in scholarly critiques of the society in which it operates. Clearly, any law, at such time as it comes under strident questioning, is given both a reinvigoration in function—as well as the fuel with which to burn itself out. As we shall see, it is the infringement of our language upon its own laws which engenders “acceptable” changes in our grammar. Crystal illustrates this point by shedding light on the fact that English critique seems a constant cycle:
A glance at newspapers or government reports after the turn of the century shows that the same concerns about language were being expressed then as now: standards of English had evidently reached an unprecedented low point in schools, and adult usage was deteriorating so rapidly that there was little hope for the future of the language (90).
Additionally, Wallace points us to “the wars that have raged in both lexicography and education ever since the notoriously liberal Webster’s Third New International Dictionary came out in 1961 and included such terms as heighth and irregardless…” (43). By these instances, be they tongue in cheek or not, we can see that our language certainly is not immune to the common grammatical myths which arise from an unwillingness to change—or to accept change. “It’s disheartening to see irregardless show up in print. ‘This isn’t a word—its a crime in progress,’ writes O’Conner. ‘The word you want is regardless. Irrespective of what you hear and read, there is no such word as irregardless” (Stingl 10). With the aforementioned in mind, let us examine a few of the leading sources of information where the use of our language is concerned:
Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that “there is no such word.” There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead (Merriam – Webster Online).
Irregardless, as is quite clear, is a word, and is in wide use. But, there are better ways to state one’s case, a better use of acceptable style, says one college dictionary: “IRREGARDLESS is considered nonstandard because it is redundant: once the negative idea is expressed by the –less ending, it is poor style to add the negative ir- prefix to express the same idea. Nonetheless, it is occasionally used by some speakers, perhaps in an attempt to achieve greater emphasis” (Stein, 707). Clearly, we are drawn to emphatics. We concern ourselves, in grammar, with right and wrong, with good and bad. Obviously, many English speakers refer to dictionaries simply because they expect to find something concrete—some written law—which will direct them toward their best emphasis in order that they make good sense, a strong point.
English speakers delight in their dictionaries. There is a burgeoning dictionary market, in fact. Kister knows that Americans are eager to find proof that they are right, or, at least proof they are about to make a “good” purchase. He illustrates our propensity for seeking encouragement: “…many people long for some authority to tell them what is correct. They want to see in print that, say, irregardless, a commonly encountered variant of regardless, is considered wrong or ignorant” (24). And he is right. If we are to win arguments—to appear as knowledgeable as we daily assure ourselves we are—we must consult with experts. We must find ways to be right. There are liberal dictionaries, and conservative ones. And we can find, within our chosen lines of thinking and speaking, proof that our way is best. We do this by trusting in our chosen media. Certainly, our favorite public speakers, radio talk-show hosts and pundits will always sponsor the proper usage. But what happens when we hear something we disagree with?
Ted Reuter, writer for The Christian Science Monitor, hints at the fact that he enjoys listening to National Public Radio. He states that the program, “This American Life,” which is hosted by Ira Glass, has put him off a bit. Glass’ grammar, it would seem, is simply unacceptable. And, of course, Reuter feels the need to call him on it: “He [Glass] responded that while he knows the rules of grammar,” Reuter says, “‘and how they apply to this particular case,’ the grammatically correct way ‘doesn’t sound like the way people normally talk.’ The ‘everybody does it’ defense – on NPR!” (11). Mr. Reuter is upset. He does not like it when someone tells him it is ok to speak the way the people speak. While we may find this strange, given our current assessment of a changing English language, others, still, are outraged: “…Irregardless is not a word!” writes Jennifer Dignan of Literary Cavalcade, “Think about it: the prefix ‘ir’ means ‘not,’ so irregardless means ‘not without regard to.’ Or, it would mean that, if it were a word. Which it is not” (23). Clearly, our language can be something of a stumbling block—and we, its constituents, are subject to bouts of “grammar rage”—if you will. But would it not be almost as interesting to concern ourselves with all the fuss over the rules, as opposed to the rules themselves? Perhaps, but what we find most prevalent in critical circles is, inevitably, little more than criticism and criticism of criticisms. Boring. And here, in our present mode, it will certainly prove more entertaining to conduct an examination of the natural processes which engender change—not, as it would seem—the blathering of critics. Let us look closely at what Dignan has, so painstakingly, pointed out.
Dignon illustrated what she deemed irregardless’ problem: that it is some fantastic newfangled form of the dreaded double-negative. Perhaps this is not such a bad thing, because “in many other languages—and in some local or dialectal forms of English both today and in earlier times—multiple negatives are intensifiers, adding emphasis. Irregardless has a fine flow about it, with a stronger negative feel than regardless that some people obviously find attractive. Indeed, the stress pattern of the word probably influenced the addition of the prefix” (Quinion). Clearly, we could go back and forth. And, for the sake of argument, we shall. Kreyche, speaking for Dignan’s side, says, “As much as we hear the word, irregardless, it is not a legitimate one. To allow it would be to negate what is intended. The old rule still holds true that ‘two negatives make a positive.’ Regardless is the proper term” (82). But does it sound better? We have seen that many English speakers have couched their grammar upon little more than what they hear from the mouths of their associates. Truly, Americans, as most English speakers alive today, are hit daily by voices from all angles, all perspectives, all directions. It is in this manner that the media emerges, again, as a harbinger—as the harbinger—of endemic change in a grammar. Indeed, Soukhanov writes, “When our so-called role models in the media make botcheries such as these, they creep into general usage” (166). Sounds like she may be on Dignan’s team, but we won’t fault her for that. If the media is responsible for the things that “creep into general usage,” perhaps this is how the language has—and will—change along the course of the future. If that be the case, then it will certainly be much easier to examine than when we choose to look at our English through a critic’s lens, which seeks not to monitor, but to condemn or applaud—whichever seems right at the time. Who could argue that irregardless is not in use? There are none. But leaving that argument aside, we must finally, make a prediction about a future date—a date at which irregardless is as common as, say, irrespective or irresponsible. Those words, to this writers ear, are quite pleasing in sound and much easier to use than their roots. Perhaps what ends up accepted, or acceptable, is simply that which projects the most pleasing sound to the ears.
In closing, we should remember the Sufi dervish and our grammarian debating at the well. Well, which is to be master? Where does one get the idea that he is right, and the other wrong? Annette Kolodny, in her “Letting Go Our Grand Obsessions: Notes Toward a New Literary History of the American Frontiers,” gives some revealing insight into our dilemma. If we are to understand the origin of a word’s initial “acceptance,” we should understand something of origins themselves. “I am asking that we once and for all eschew the myth of origins” Kolodny writes, “—with its habits of either fetishizing or marginalizing race, place and ethnicity [...] there can be no Ur-landscape because there are so many borderlands…” (Lauter, 136). Kolodny has stricken the mark, so to speak. There are, indeed, “many borderlands.” And while she is referring to the quantification and qualification of colonial and post-colonial literatures, we must take her insight and run with it, as it is so fresh—so untarnished by destructive critical focus. What she proposes must apply to what lies beyond the literature itself, what surrounds all literature—literally—the grammar by which that literature is, quite literally, defined. Kolodny, in this sense, offers a hand to both the dervish and the grammarian. Her insight is above reproach. She has opened the door, albeit to her probable dismay, for new words—words of such dubious character as irregardless—to waltz beyond daily usage and find themselves excepted, nearly immune to criticism. A word with no definable origin, no “Ur-landscape,” which is certainly the case with irregardless, cannot be pinned down. One can judge it neither inappropriate—or appropriate. It will, like most of its kind, remain, quite simply—a word. And, to this writer, a most wonderful word indeed. “So the precedents are all on the side of irregardless,” Quinion writes, “and—despite the opinions of the experts—I suspect the word will become even more popular in the US in the future.”
What’s in a word? Was that the question? No. The question was something like: What changes facilitate the induction or discharge of a word or phrase from acceptable use in the English language, maybe any language? Sadly, this is a question which we may not have answered. But we have pinpointed an epicenter. Certainly, debates will always rage. In fact, it is evident that debate exists, often times, for its own sake. If future English speakers decide—or are “permitted”—to add emphasis to their words by means of inflections added to the beginnings, rather than the endings, of their root words, what could be wrong with that? A close examination of the use of irregardless as an English word reveals the very process by which a language evolves. In fact, the word has remarkable rhetorical powers, and seems a delightfully fluid way to end a sentence—an entire essay even. As we have seen, this unusual word does in fact exist, irregardless.
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Works Cited
Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 2nd ed. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Dignan, Jennifer. “Get it Straight.”
Literary Cavalcade Mar. 2005: 22-24.
Kister, K.F. “What to Look For in a Dictionary.”
Consumers’ Research Magazine Apr. 2002: 22-25.
Kreyche, Gerald, F. “Tripping Over the English Tongue.”
USA Today Magazine Sept. 1997: 82.
Lauter, Paul, et al., eds. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 5th ed. 5 vols. Lexington: Heath, 2004.
Merriam – Webster Online. Nov. 2005.
< http://webster.com/dictionary/irregardless>.
Quinion, Michael. “Irregardless.” World Wide Words
Oct. 2005. <http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-irr1.htm>.
Rueter, Ted. “English on the Chopping Block.”
Christian Science Monitor 7 Dec. 1998: 11.
Shah, Idries. Tales of the Dervishes. New York: Arkana, 1993.
Soukhanov, Anne, H . “Protecting Our Language.”
Town & Country Sept. 2001: 166.
Stein, Jess., et al. eds. The Random House Collegiate Dictionary. rev. ed. New York: Random House, 1988.
Stingl, Sjim. “[Syntax].” Writer 114. 4 (2001): 10-11.
Wallace, David Foster. “Tense Present Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage.” Harper’s Magazine Apr. 2001: 39-58.
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©2005 Sam Heard
Gilgit
Karakoram Highway, FANA Pakistan
11:30 pm – Monday, February 20, 2006 ::
It is pitch black now. Before the sun set, I had pressed my forehead to the glass like a child watching fireworks from the back seat of his father’s car. I tried a dozen times to take pictures, but had to give that up. I was missing too much. I decided just to sit back and soak in as much as I could. Mountains over 20,000 feet are so numerous here that they are not given names. Many of them have never been explored. I saw the sun set over nameless towers of stone that rise five and six thousand feet higher than any peak in North America. Now, nothing but whatever dirt and stone the headlights touch. We are bouncing along through some of the most beautiful country on earth. I should be resting. But I can’t sleep. The bus we have been riding for the past twelve hours slows and stops at a military checkpoint. Two or three soldiers board the bus and I hear a man questioning the driver. He points me out, and motions for me to come forward. I am asked for my passport. I’ve been warned repeatedly not to hand it over in a situation like this – just to show it. Of course, they don’t tell you that refusing to hand it over is bound to raise a few red flags. Folks don’t expect a white boy up in these parts at this time of night. What they do expect, though, is that when they’re holding a gun and ask you for something – you give it to them. We’re cool, man. We’re cool. That’s what you think at a time like this. I may have even said it aloud. I don’t know.
“America?” “Yes,” I say, “U.S.” No smile. No nothing. There is nothing more to explain. I am ushered off the bus, searched, and asked to sign the log book and meet the captain. “What you are here?” “I’m visiting friends in Gilgit.” I want to explain that I can barely stand up straight, that my legs are both asleep and I need to stretch. But in this particular situation on the side of a mountain in the middle of the night when you don’t speak the language and two men holding guns are wondering why you won’t let them hold your passport, you just stand still. Real still. My backside feels like I’ve got pineapples in my hip pockets. These buses aren’t big enough for anyone over six feet tall. Not even close. “You go back for bus.” Gladly, fellas. My pleasure.
The gentleman seated in front of me is drooling on the cracked glass and rusted frame of the window we share. This guy’s snoring is loud enough to have awakened several passengers who are now sitting up – wondering why I was taken off. (and I thought I’d fit in so well) A Jeep with a flashing light and a machine-gun mounted in its roll bars waits in front of us for vehicles to come from behind and join the convoy they are creating. Armed escort in front. Armed escort in back. It is common knowledge here that nobody travels alone through these areas at night. Not that they would. This means a bus. A car-load of locals. Nobody. In this part of the world, an ambush is just as common as a crash. Random acts of aggression against “outsiders” are as common as flat tires. Safety is not something anybody here is familiar with. It has been like this in Northern Pakistan for thousands of years. The only thing different about this road tonight is that there are vehicles running through these tribal territories on compressed natural gas instead of good grass hay and pasture with a watering hole.
We start off again around midnight. Safety in numbers. We are a convoy of six: two commercial buses; three Bedford trucks loaded with who knows what, and my favorite, a dusty old Toyota hatch-back that leaves the impression of having just fallen from the sky, miraculously still able to travel on through the dark over the rocks and dust. We must be close. We could be on one of Jupiter’s moons. I would believe it. I can see lights ahead in the distance, scattered on a hillside I can’t make out. Everyone is asleep again. Not me. Wide awake.
The escorts pull off just inside the gate to the city, which is a checkpoint surrounded by bunkers, sandbag structures with machine gun turrets and men asleep in tents beside. I am checked again – at gunpoint. I am searched like I will be searched in a week in Detroit: a dirty bearded man with a Pakistani visa – coming into the country with a bag full of things that absolutely must be dumped all over the Customs screening room floor and picked through with rubber gloves and a thousand questions. The Department of Homeland Security. Well, homeland security, suffice it to say, is something the troops in the Northern Areas of Pakistan are adept at providing. It’s just that they have a more hands-on approach to the job, literally. A search in the dark on a mountain road feels a bit more thorough than the same search in a line at the airport back home under cover of quick fluorescent lighting and video monitors. There is a difference. Need I be more specific?
We are greeted after my “security screening” by my good friend, Fareed. Fareed’s father owns the Gilgit Toyota dealership/mechanic-shop/cafe/grocery store – all those things. All under the same roof. The first thing he does is introduce me to his friend Abdul Kareem. And, yes, I did immediately know that I could never forget his name. Kareem Abdul Jabbar was one of my favorites. I just have to remember to reverse the first two names. Good. Got it. Abdul Kareem is a policeman, stationed in Gilgit. He is from Chorit. Chorit is the village we are headed to at the base of Nanga Parbat. His father owns a store there. Everyone knows everyone here. I am way out of place. It should come as no surprise that as we are standing in the parking lot of the bus terminal discussing why I need Kareem as an escort on my first night in Gilgit, some sort of firefight breaks out in the center of town. We can hear several bursts of small-arms fire, machine guns, rifles and pistols in a skirmish that holds my attention more than it does theirs. Mohammad Sharif and Shameem, my traveling companions explain that this is not uncommon, that the city has been under martial law for quite some time due to terrorist threat and almost constant sectarian violence. Sectarian violence. Now there’s an interesting topic. The Sunni and Shia Muslims in Gilgit have been fighting for who knows how long. Hundreds have died here in the last few years over various controversies. Welcome to Gilgit.
We spent that night in a hotel two blocks from the mosque (below) where, as we were doing our best to sleep, two or three gunmen fired off occasional bursts from the tower. In the photo, you can make out the holes in the structure from the returned fire. I slept a little. Kareem slept beside me with an AK-47 across his chest. We all slept with our shoes on. After breakfast the next morning we got out to check on the situation in the bazaar. Business as usual. I got to meet Kareem’s lieutenant, who had a few questions about my business in Gilgit. Nice guy. He shared, over tea, how they had to wait until daylight to get a clean shot at the guy in the tower who was doing most of the shooting. Apparently he was difficult to “get.” I would hope so. I have never been more awake – more alert – than I felt while exploring those streets that day. Gilgit town is amazing. It is more beautiful than I’d imagined. Certainly more deceptively beautiful. There are bunkers, guards, towers and guns on most busy corners. Regular army troops, mountain patrol and Ranger platoons are scattered throughout the city. Their presence is intentionally obvious – and as far as I am concerned – appreciated. I asked Kareem’s lieutenant about the damage to the back of the mosque. “Someone threw a grenade into the tower?” I asked. The lieutenant laughed and told us that no grenades were used. “No. No. Fifty!” He’s pointing to a .50 caliber machine gun mounted in a turret across the street. Behind me, above the clouds, Rakaposhi towers above Gilgit Town at 25,550 feet. Lamb kabob is sputtering in spicy oil in a gargantuan silver tub at my feet. Children are waiting for me to walk away from the lieutenant, their hands out – their bellies empty. There is no place on earth I would rather be.