Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Some time ago, I put up a post cataloguing one instance of the larger debate over how and when one should use the phrase "begs the question." There are two camps on this one. First, there's the Rugby Dan/Jeremy camp, whose members are firmly against using begs the question to mean raises the question, under any circumstances, and generally feel that those who do misuse it in this fashion should be subject to, at the least, scorn (Rugby) and, at the most, death (Jeremy). I hesitantly count myself a part of this camp, and, although I am slightly more equivocal in my views, I come down on Jeremy's side of the punishment question. Arrayed against this formidable alliance of nitpickers/linguistic crusaders stand Tom and Ariel, Tom doubly so because he not only decries linguistic prescriptivism but also believes begs the question to be an empty statement (according to Tom, all valid arguments beg the question).

To each group I offer a challenge. Now, one mildly sophisticated thing to know about "hopefully" is that it is commonly used incorrectly, as is spelled out in some length in the usage note here. Saying "hopefully, I will do [x]," actually means I will do x, and I will do it in a manner that suggests that I am full of hope, not I hope that I will be able to do x. One interesting aside from the usage note: opposition to this usage has increased on the panel, despite the fact that other adverbs used in this fashion are given a pass (mercifully, frankly), so:

It is not the use of sentence adverbs per se that bothers the Panel; rather, the specific use of hopefully in this way has become a shibboleth.

As such, I would challenge Jeremy and Dan to only use hopefully in its original sense. As the usage note points out, unlike with begs/raises the question, hopefully is useful precisely because there's no exact synonym for its fake meaning. As such, using hopefully exclusively correctly will likely entail both correcting slip-ups and, occasionally, preemptively contorting one's phrasing.

On the other hand, I would challenge the Tom/Ariels among us to deliberately employ the "modern" usage of begs the question in front of people (a) whose respect they desire (maybe law school profs for Ariel; Ilan and/or Tyler Cowan for Tom), and (b) who are reasonably likely to hold Dan/Jeremy-esque views on the usage question.