Objections to E-Prime

Proponents of E-Prime claim that by removing all uses of the verb “to be” from the English language, we can more accurately evaluate the world and the relation of the human mind to that world. Noticing that SOME uses of the verb “to be” smuggle in metaphysical assumptions, disguise opinion as fact, and cloud our view of experiential data, advocates of E-Prime recommend that we throw out ALL uses of this multifarious verb. This “linguistic cleansing” is supposed to get rid of our habitual language-based prejudices and allow us to think more clearly. This strikes me as an exceedingly simple-minded and clumsy approach to a complex and multifaceted problem, a bit like amputating a persons foot to treat an ingrown toenail (if you "are" an E-Prime enthusiast and find this sentence completely bone-headed, at least note that it used no form of the "forbidden verb").

Contrary to what E-Primers say, it seems to me that there are plenty of perfectly legitimate and helpful uses of the verb “to be.”

Consider for example, the present progressive tense. “What is Bob doing?” “Bob is jogging”. I find it difficult to see any principled reason to call this a misuse of language. It communicates clearly what “is” taking place in the world (assuming Bob “is” in fact jogging). With E-Prime, we lose the present progressive tense. E-Primers can try to sidestep this by saying something awkward, like “Bob currently jogs” or something that doesn’t strictly answer the question, like “Bob went jogging 20 minutes ago.” But aside from a heroic devotion to purging the English language of “isness” come what may, it’s hard to see why either of these are preferable to the simple and informative “Bob is jogging.”

Another use of “is” that seems perfectly legitimate to me is the “is of class membership.” A square “is” a rectangle, a parrot “is” a bird, a human “is” an animal, and so on. We can also add negatives to this list: A triangle “is not” a rectangle, a spatula “is not” a bird, and a human “is not” a plant. If this use of “isness” is a mistake, I would like to know why.

Yet another use of “to be” forbidden by both E-Prime and General Semantics is the “is of prediction.” This assigns properties and relations to things: this book “is” made of paper and ink; George “is” sad right now; the nearest burger stand “is” northwest of here on High Street. To a normal English speaker, any of these might be a highly informative statement, so why ban them? Why trouble ourselves over ways to recast them in “beingless” terms when their meaning “is” so readily apparent?

And lest we forget, the dreaded “is of identity”--a grand blasphemy against General Semantics, E-Prime, and several other “linguistic cleansing” systems. It seems to me that the is of identity has plenty of reasonable uses, like pointing out that two intentional concepts pick out the same referent. For example, we might say that “the morning star is the evening star,” noting that both of these terms refer to the same object—namely the planet Venus. For someone who did not realize that these two terms referred to the same entity, this use of “is” is informative and accurate. The same goes for the statement “Clark Kent is Superman”. This expresses an important and legitimate identity that gets captured with elegant simplicity by the word “is”. Another example: “heat is molecular motion”. To say that “heat causes molecular motion” or “heat results from molecular motion” would simply be a scientific mistake, like saying “Clark Kent causes Superman” or “Venus causes the Evening Star”. In clumsy E-Prime we could say "Heat equals molecular motion", but this gains us no further insight, and we lose some points in the style department. Identities exist, and I see no reason to dance around them when we have a very simple verb that covers the territory nicely.

All that said, I want to make it emphatically clear that I am not claiming that ALL uses of the verb “to be” are reasonable. I am claiming that SOME are reasonable, and that as such, trying to rid ourselves entirely of the copula seems profoundly undermotivated.

Furthermore, it seems that we can make perfectly idiotic, unjust, incomprehensible, and bigoted claims in perfect E-Prime. Consider a couple of E-Prime friendly statements I found in an article in the current issue of the Christian magazine Charisma: “Greek culture provided a universal language for communicating the gospel, and the Greek’s worldview eroded many of the deceptive foundations of false religion.” Apparently perfect nonsense “is” compatible with perfect E-Prime. The same article later cautions believers: “Don’t miss the revolutionary message of Christmas: The birth of Christ reveals God as a living, supernatural force in the lives of His people.” I won’t bother to enumerate the multitude of problems with this statement, but I will note in passing that use of the verb “to be” is NOT among them. Compare these two massively muddled proclamations with any of the examples of “isness” statements I gave, like “the Morning Star is the Evening Star” or “a square is a type of rectangle,” and consider whether the use of the verb “to be” is the source of our habitually muddled thinking, and whether its elimination would really solve these problems, or merely mask them.

It seems to me that what is needed is not the removal of the copula from our language, but more careful and considered usage of that Swiss Army Knife of verbs. We can evaluate uses of “is” on a case-to-case basis rather than relying on the seemingly dogmatic generalization “is = bad.” I’ve given some uses of “ises” that I consider valid, and these examples can be multiplied indefinitely. There are other evaluational tools that strike me as far more promising than E-Prime, for example what General Semantics calls the “extensional approach” which involves (among other things) making our definitions accountable to the facts, rather than the other way around. Acute awareness of our highly fallible nature is another tool that I believe can improve our evaluating. Neither of these approaches require the banishment of the dreaded copula, though they might help us use it more carefully, which seems to me like a good thing.

My belief that you should all stop worrying and learn to enjoy copulation probably puts me in a small minority in this tribe, but it should make interesting fodder for discussion at any rate. Knowledge “is” always a work in progress.