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Proper English? Says who? (article) | ||
Tags: Purism | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5042 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 1 of 8 08 May 2012 at 3:45am | IP Logged |
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I found a nice article that is essentially a book review, but there's also a lot of interesting facts and information on the debate over descriptivism and prescriptivism in the English language. Here it is, in case anyone might be interested: The English Wars (The New Yorker).
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| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5947 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 2 of 8 08 May 2012 at 4:09am | IP Logged |
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What a great article, thanks espejismo.
I count myself proudly a prescriptivist. If I encounter any of you on the street saying "irregardless" I am liable to attempt to hit you with a stick or something similar. And if I read anyone writing "I have three cat's and two dog's" (I am seeing this sort of painful error all the time now) I am liable (in addition to saying that is way too many cats) to start screaming uncontrollably again. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4694 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 3 of 8 08 May 2012 at 4:37am | IP Logged |
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Good article! It reminds me of this Washington Post article about the new approved use of "hopefully":
Link Brief summary: before this the only approved use of "hopefully" was apparently as an adverb, e.g., "'Surely you are joking,' the grammarian said hopefully." (Example from the article.) But now the AP stylebook has relented and is allowing it to be used as a sentence modifier, e.g., "Hopefully, we will make it there on time." It's funny because prior to reading this article I never thought about English making much of a distinction between spoken language and written language, like Czech or others. But now I realize that I've been respecting the differences all along without even realizing it! I would never use "hopefully" as a sentence modifier in an essay. It just doesn't sound right and I still won't do it probably, AP stylebook or no AP stylebook. Edited by Hekje on 08 May 2012 at 4:38am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 8 08 May 2012 at 5:07am | IP Logged |
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Interesting indeed.
I'm generally descriptivist but this doesn't mean that I abhor a given prescription out of hand*. For example, I proscribe the use of "begging the question" as synonymous to "raising the question" despite the common (mis)use of the phrase. I also agree on the tendency toward conciseness (but not the clipped formulas of journalism where space constraints make writers resort unduly to stereotypes or short words which are archaic, tangentially related or clichés e.g. "Obama taps Smithers as new security czar." for "Obama picks Smithers as new chief of security", "They elected to continue amid their protests" for "They chose to continue despite their protests"). *I do however dislike political correctness and prescriptions with a political or ideological undertone. The only politically correct term that I use regularly is "Saami" for "Lappish" and even then I use "Lappish" now and then when describing the languages to other non-specialists since it's marginally better known. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4613 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 5 of 8 08 May 2012 at 12:06pm | IP Logged |
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Interesting article. The joking style annoys me a bit. I am also a prescriptivist. I like Fowler's books a lot. Some parts are a bit old fashioned, and if Fowler were alive today he would agree with that (being prescriptivist doesn't mean thinking that nothing changes), but there are a lot of good principles and they really make you think about language a lot.
It's absolutely true that many of the mistakes people make with vocabulary are due to trying to use fancier words than necessary and failing because the fancy words mean something else. Saying 'fulsome' for 'full' is a huge mistake, and defending it is just foolish. I might take the opportunity to say that the rule against split infinitives in English does not come from trying to impose Latin grammar on English, which is what many people say. Split infinitives disappeared spontaneously from English in the 16th and 17th centuries. According to Wikipedia, Shakespeare used only one (and that was for the sake of rhyme and meter), Spenser, Dryden, Pope, and the King James Bible used none, and Samuel Johnson used them very rarely (contrary to what the New Yorker article suggests). Pepys used one. We're talking about people who wrote thousands of pages. So when people started splitting infinitives at some point, it was natural that it was controversial. (I basically agree with Fowler on split infinitives.) Also ending a sentence with a preposition is another thing people talk about a lot. Many people confuse prepositions with particles (or whatever they're called) - in 'put up with something', 'up' is not a preposition. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4856 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 8 08 May 2012 at 5:57pm | IP Logged |
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History shows that the prescriptivists are always wrong.
If the prescriptivists of Chaucer's time were right we'd still be speaking like Chaucer. If the prescriptivists of Shakespeare's time were right we'd still be speaking like Shakespeare. Prescriptivism has a limited shelf life, and must be traded in for a newer version every generation. No matter how strongly one might wish for prescriptivism to work, it goes counter to the very laws of nature, and in the end, must always fail to hold back the tide of change. It's one thing to resist another person who disagrees with your views. It's quite another thing when your views disagree with reality itself. Reality will always win in the end. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4613 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 7 of 8 08 May 2012 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
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I don't agree. Prescriptivists don't say that language doesn't/shouldn't change, and even though prescriptivists tend to be conservative, prescriptivism can be a force that changes a language. Prescriptivism and descriptivism aren't theories about language development - they are philosophies of language education.
Even though I said I was a prescriptivist (by the way) I quite like dialects (so in that sense I'm not). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4613 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 8 of 8 08 May 2012 at 8:14pm | IP Logged |
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Also, the fact that we can still read Shakespeare is partly due to a kind of prescriptivism - since Shakespeare is the most important English author and has been studied by nearly all English-speaking schoolchildren for centuries, he (and other writers) continues to be a model for the English language.
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