You know what's almost as bad as homossssssssssssssssssexuals?

[james_davis_nicoll]

English majors! Elitist English majors!

Contains OSC

Comments

[bwross.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he claims it isn't a "natural narrative choice" except for "jokes and anecdotes", and that "natural spoken English" does use the "true present tense". So it is appropriate for answering interview questions, because that would be speaking, not narrating.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Except if I tell a story out loud, I am narrating it.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

But if you write down that you are telling a story out loud, than that's a "framing device".

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

But you don't need a framing device--you could have the whole story be the monologue of some guy at a bar.

[bwross.livejournal.com]

You're trying to split hairs. It's quite clear that the medium shouldn't be taken as distinctive here. So whether it's written or spoken, a narrative is a narrative. And that "spoken" refers to talking like in an interview... even though this one is recorded by writing it down. Which is my point... he isn't telling a story or narrating in the interview, so his use of perfect tense isn't hypocritical. The guy's a crackpot with a lot of weird ideas and bad logic, but I'm not going to go out of the way to make up flaws in his consistency that aren't there. There are more than enough that are.

[matt-ruff.livejournal.com]

His point about jokes and anecdotes is premised on the notion that past tense is "the voice we use for truth." But solemn vows ("I do"), affirmations of faith ("I believe in one God"), and claims of identity ("I am Iron Man"), are all typically made in present tense.

[bwross.livejournal.com]

All of which are spoken statements, not narratives, and he's admitted that the perfect tense is perfectly natural for that sort of thing.