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A Day in My Life.: Little known fact: Ke$ha is a certified genius. Her IQ is 150 and she got a 1500 on her SATs.
A few thoughts:
1. While I don’t mean to minimise her achievement, the initial claim that Kesha is a genius is a bit of a hyperbole to start with. I mean, IQ tests aren’t that reliable, and exam scores aren’t always great at indicating how smart someone is. I doubt we’re ever going to find an objective measure of intelligence, so it’s probably not wise to pin too much importance on these things. ;)
2. I’m pretty sure Taylor’s original post was mostly joking — exaggeration for comic effect. But I do think it’s a bit of a leap to go from ‘she has some ungrammatical lines in her songs’ to ‘she can’t possibly do well academically’. She’s a pop musician and there’s an accepted, well-established vernacular for pop music in which the grammar is rarely perfect. Things like double negatives, for example, I barely notice when they’re being sung, but they sound really wrong to me when spoken. As Flick said, there’s no reason not to believe Kesha has full command of standard English grammar but just chooses, whether for ease or stylistic reasons, not to use it in her songs. Most people do write quite differently in formal situations (e.g. exams) than they do when they’re being informally creative. I know I certainly do. I mean, my posts on Tumblr are much less rigorously grammatical than my essays. ;)
3. However! The line between ‘non-standard’ and ‘incorrect’ is pretty fine, and although it’s largely subjective I think a case could be made for the lines Taylor quoted being actually ‘incorrect’. But even if they are, it’s Kesha’s prerogative to use incorrect grammar if she wants to. It’s not really anyone’s place to stop her, when the situation is writing a pop song. I’m not really that sure where I was going with this point, now.
4. This is probably tangential, but I don’t know if the fact that those constructions are standard in African-American slang really justifies whether it’s appropriate for Kesha to use them or not. I mean, I understand that you were just trying to point out that there does exist a dialect in which they’re standard, but Kesha is white, so is the existence of this dialect relevant to her? Furthermore, is it perhaps offensive for her to be appropriating aspects of a culture not her own in her music? But then again, that’s not exactly a new thing in pop music, I guess. :P
I doubt any of that actually helped to resolve anything, but it was a very interesting debate and just sparked off a couple of thoughts. ;)
We should discuss grammar more often, is what I am thinking!Or maybe I won’t say that because it makes me sound like a colossal nerd, haha.- I agree, and I wasn’t trying to dispute that the claim may been a little dubious, just the assertion that it was dubious because her grammar was “bad”.
- I did assume it was at least partially in jest, but I’ve noticed few other occasions where he’s complained about people using “bad grammar”. I wanted to make the point that if you are going to be picky about other people’s grammar, then it’s important to make a distinction between what is incorrect grammar, what is incorrect punctuation and what is non-standard grammar, rather than lumping it all together and calling something “bad grammar” just because it doesn’t follow the prescriptive rules of Standard English. But, my appologies if I’m being unfair or I’ve misunderstood you, Taylor :) I also realise the irony that I’m now being pedantic about pedantry ;)
- I’ll accept that there is a fine line between ‘incorrect’ and ‘non-standard’, but I think that when a construction becomes widely used and widely understood (and both of those examples are), it ceases to be ungrammatical in the sense that it’s breaking some law of syntax in that particular vernacular, because obviously the rule has changed. If you take the example of the line “they know we got swagger”, which should be “they know we have got swagger” in Standard English, all that’s happened is the auxillary ‘have’ has been dropped and ‘got’ by itself has become a synonym for ‘to have’. I don’t think there is anything inherently “wrong” with that, except in the sense that this feature of that particular version of English differs from Standard English.
- I think she’s justified in using the native vernacular of that style of music, though I don’t think I’m in a position to judge whether it might be offensive or not. And I think she’s probably using it because of the cultural associations; it sounds edgier. Using standard English in a pop song would sound completely naff. ;)
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madam333 reblogged this from pasdesolee and added:
She’s older than us, and sometimes they don’t add in the third writing section I believe. So I think 1500 would be out...
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icecoldblue reblogged this from viciousregulations and added:
NOT FOR LONG.. getting wasted kinda ruins your IQ with time
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She’s got it all right:)
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whitefirevampire reblogged this from krissygermanotta and added:
What the Bi-otches!! :)
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mydaysgoonandon reblogged this from neurocranium and added:
Yeaaaaaaaahhhhhh. You go Ke$ha ;D
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