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READING PASSAGE 3
Attitudes to language
It is not easy to be systematic and objective about language study. Popular linguistic debate regularly
deteriorates into invective and polemic. Language belongs to everyone, so most people
feel they have a right to
hold an opinion about it. And when opinions differ, emotions can run high. Arguments can start as easily over
minor points of usage as over major policies of linguistic education.
Language, moreover, is a very public behaviour, so it is easy for different usages to be noted and criticised. No
part of society or social behaviour is exempt: linguistic factors influence how we judge personality,
intelligence,
social status, educational standards, job aptitude, and many other areas of identity and social
survival. As a result, it is easy to hurt, and to be hurt, when language use is unfeelingly attacked.
In
its most general sense, prescriptivism is the view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value
than others, and that this ought to be imposed on the whole of the speech community. The view is propounded
especially in relation to grammar and vocabulary, and frequently with reference to pronunciation. The variety
which is favoured, in this account, is usually a version of the 'standard' written
language, especially
as encountered in literature, or in the formal spoken language which most closely reflects this style. Adherents
to this variety are said to speak or write 'correctly'; deviations from it are said to be 'incorrect!
All the main languages have been studied prescriptively, especially in the 18th century approach to the writing
of grammars and dictionaries. The aims of these early grammarians were threefold: (a) they wanted to codify
the
principles of their languages, to show that there was a system beneath the apparent chaos of usage, (b) they
wanted a means of settling disputes over usage, and (c) they wanted to point out what they felt to be
common errors, in order to 'improve' the language. The authoritarian nature of the approach is
best characterised by its reliance on ‘rules' of grammar. Some usages are 'prescribed,' to be learnt and followed
accurately; others are 'proscribed,' to be avoided. In this early period, there were no half-measures: usage was
either right or wrong, and it was the task of the grammarian not simply to
record alternatives, but to pronounce
judgement upon them.
These attitudes are still with us, and they motivate a widespread concern that linguistic standards should be
maintained. Nevertheless, there is an alternative point of view that is concerned less with standards than with
the facts of linguistic usage. This approach is summarised in the statement that it is
the task of the grammarian
to describe, not prescribe to record the facts of linguistic diversity, and not to attempt the impossible tasks of
evaluating language variation or halting language change. In the second half of the 18th century, we already
find advocates of this view,
such as Joseph Priestiey, whose Rudiments of English Grammar (1761) insists that
'the custom of speaking is the original and only just standard of any language! Linguistic issues, it is argued,
cannot be solved by logic and legislation. And this view has become the tenet of the modern linguistic
approach to grammatical analysis.
In our own time, the opposition between 'descriptivists' and 'prescriptivists' has often become extreme, with
both sides painting unreal pictures of the other. Descriptive grammarians have been presented as people who
do
not care about standards, because of the way they see all forms of usage as equally valid. Prescriptive
grammarians have been presented as blind adherents to a historical tradition. The opposition has even
been presented in quasi-political terms - of radical liberalism vs elitist conservatism.
