OT - "It begs the question"

Submitted by Section 1 on

I know that there are a great many students of all levels on the MGoBoard, in addition to many post-graduates who are interested in writing.  There are STEM students who, despite their technical orientation, wish to learn better writing and communication skills.  God bless them all.  There are liberal arts students whose future careers in education, journalism, the law, etc., depend upon being skilled communicators.

One of several basic grammatical mistakes that I see in comment writing at MGoBlog is the misuse of the syllogism, "It begs the question."  People -- young students, I presume -- frequently write, "it begs the question," when they really mean "it raises the question."

This issue of misuse comes up so frequently, that a web site was devoted to the annoying error.  And then, linking to that site, Roy Peter Clark of The Poynter Institute took the time to write this post at Poynter.com.

So don't be a jerk, and misuse the phrase, "it begs the question."  Underclass students in English composition ought to know this.  No self-respecting professional should commit this mistake in usage.  The only explanation for the error seems to be people who think that they know a little bit about writing, and who want to appear sophisticated, but who are in fact poseurs.

 

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Flocka

February 1st, 2014 at 3:58 PM ^

You could care less huh ? So how much do you care ? All I know is you have some level of care because you could care less. Edit: this applies to Logan down below.

Joined: 01/19/2014

MGoPoints: 555

B-Nut-GoBlue

February 1st, 2014 at 3:54 PM ^

I do agree with the OP.  It kills me everytime I hear it used wrong.  And I ONLY ever hear it used wrong.

An easy example of how the informal fallacy is to be used and one that hits home:  "Man, we have zero rushing yards because 'we just suck' at rushing the ball".  This person has begged the question with such a statement.  They have begged, well, why do we really have zero rushing yards?  Or, why do we really suck at rushing the ball?  They both mean the same thing and the above "we suck at rushing" doesn't really answer why we have zero rushing yards.

 

 

Joined: 09/30/2011

MGoPoints: 43651

BlueRibbon

February 1st, 2014 at 8:59 PM ^

One hundred years ago, calling someone gay meant that person was happy and carefree.  Now, thanks to common usage, it means homosexual.  I don't know how long ago "begs the question" was first used by someone who meant "raises the question," but at this point "begs the question" is almost universally used, and understood, to mean "raises the question."  Those few holdouts who insist on sticking to the original definition should stop being such pre-Madonnas, IMO.

Joined: 06/26/2012

MGoPoints: 595

RagingBean

February 1st, 2014 at 4:02 PM ^

I'm of the view that language is correct as long as it conveys the user's intended meaning. Yes, there are rules and those can frequently be "broken," but the whole damn system of human communication is centered on lingual rules being borken ad infinitum.

Long story short the OP's complaints may be valid but are also uselessly pedantic and will affect little. It literally makes my head steam.

Joined: 10/29/2008

MGoPoints: 1757

Michigan Arrogance

February 1st, 2014 at 4:07 PM ^

Descriptive or Prescriptive Grammar?

I'm normally a prescriptivist, but in this case the logical, common sense way of understanding the phrase trumps the ancient origin of the phrase. But the more I think about it, do apostrophies really matter? Great, now my mind is completely bottled.

 

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 35448

Owl

February 1st, 2014 at 4:20 PM ^

While I understand your larger point about there being a difference between formal language and more relaxed language, "it begs the question" has a precise, technical meaning. Using it to mean "raises the question" is at best unclear (whereas my informal use of language was not). 

Joined: 04/14/2012

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